Flesh-Eating Disease Bug Common in US Beef, Chicken

Many thanks to kuai137 - but the thread in Breaking News just isn't getting the attention the info deserves.

...Almost half the meat tested was contaminated with staph - and over half was antibiotic resistant - the strain that causes flesh eating disease.

This is HORRIFIC!!!

Flesh-eating Disease is caused by "community-acquired methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA)" - and it's epidemic throughout the USA.

Now, it looks like our food is a main source of infection!

The dangers of CA-MRSA gained national attention last month when four children succumbed to the illness in the United States. The growing epidemic has also been witnessed in American emergency rooms, where the majority of ER visits due to infections are caused by CA-MRSA.

And guess what? Thanks to the "Cheeseburger Bill" - the FDA does NOT monitor food for staph contamination.

These staph infections range from a simple boil to antibiotic-resistant infections to flesh-eating infections. The difference between all these is the strength of the infection, how deep it goes, how fast it spreads, and how treatable it is with antibiotics.

Food producers give human antibiotics to the animals - which helps create new and virulent strains like CA-MRSA. But the FDA doesn't test for staph.

“The fact that drug-resistant S. aureus was so prevalent, and likely came from the food animals themselves, is troubling, and demands attention to how antibiotics are used in food-animal production today,” Dr. Price said.

TGen noted that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration does routine evaluations of meat and poultry for various types of contaminants. However, S. aureus is not one of them.

So even though the cattle and food production industries create and spread new and super-dangerous antibiotic resistant diseases - nothing's in place to stop it, AND they're protected from liability.

Go figure.

Gee, if only they just didn't regulate anything at all. I hear that it's completely impossible in a free market to sell people anything that is bad for them because everybody always knows everything and all harm is immediately obvious.

Right?

From ScienceDaily:

This is the first national assessment of antibiotic resistant S. aureus in the U.S. food supply. And, DNA testing suggests that the food animals themselves were the major source of contamination. ...

Researchers collected and analyzed 136 samples -- covering 80 brands -- of beef, chicken, pork and turkey from 26 retail grocery stores in five U.S. cities: Los Angeles, Chicago, Fort Lauderdale, Flagstaff and Washington, D.C.

Industrially farmed animals are fed steady diets of low-dose antibiotics - so by the time we eat the meat, the bacteria are resistant to just about any drug we can throw at them. ...Once they're inside our bodies, it's anyone's guess where the infection might take hold - and whether it will cause minor skin infections or life-threatening diseases like pneumonia, endocarditis, sepsis or flesh-eating disease.

Densely-stocked industrial farms, where food animals are steadily fed low doses of antibiotics, are ideal breeding grounds for drug-resistant bacteria that move from animals to humans, the report says.

"Antibiotics are the most important drugs that we have to treat Staph infections; but when Staph are resistant to three, four, five or even nine different antibiotics -- like we saw in this study -- that leaves physicians few options," Dr. Price said.

"The emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria -- including Staph -- remains a major challenge in clinical medicine," said Paul S. Keim, Ph.D., Director of TGen's Pathogen Genomics Division and Director of the Center for Microbial Genetics and Genomics at Northern Arizona University (NAU).

...S. aureus can cause a range of illnesses from minor skin infections to life-threatening diseases, such as pneumonia, endocarditis and sepsis.

Just cook your meat thoroughly, and wash your hands after handling raw meat.

Don't cut up your chicken on the cutting board and then cut up your tomatoes for the salad on the same cutting board without first washing the cutting board of the raw meat juices.

Just practice safe cooking and hygiene and you will be ok.

I eat my steak very rare. I have had no problems.

I'm confident in my stomach's digestive prowess.

reply to post by berkeleygal

reply to post by watchitburn


You're kidding?!? Nothing to see here, move along now? …Trust me. It's waaayyy past personal hygeine. This is a full blown epidemic that's been spreading for years - we created it - and it's in our food supply. But it's not tested for or regulated - the FDA has NO jurisdiction.

By 2007, MRSA had evolved to be sexually transmitted. Superbug "MRSA" Now Transmitted Sexually

…Or maybe you think we should wait til it's airborne?


2006: Public health experts weigh in on MRSA epidemic

MRSA, or what is commonly known as an antibiotic-resistant staph infection, is much more common than people think, according to ABC News, which reported figures that claim 2 million Americans carry the bacteria without symptoms of an infection.

2008: The Great MRSA Epidemic: Is It Time to Worry?

2008: The silent epidemic: CA-MRSA and HA-MRSA

2007: Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection

2008: How our hospitals unleashed a MRSA epidemic

Definitions of epidemic MRSA

2006: Beyond Bird Flu: The Perfect Microbial Storm

My praise for your extremely important thread with links comes from someone who was three days away from death due to an internal staph infection misdiagnosed by two doctors, caught by the third. Staph can kill! And that was before the spread of anti-biotic resistant staph.

To think that the public should be asked to accept this filth and deal with it is a sad commentary of our times. It's become the trade-off for huge scale meat producers and processors.

Also....how many people now accept upset stomachs and diarrhea after eating, without realizing improper food handling is the cause. It's not your "system" or the "spices", it's the bacteria.

reply to post by soficrow


I in no way meant to detract from the seriousness of this epidemic. Absolutely everyone should be made aware of this.

But with that being said, I am not going to stop eating meat.

Has a solution been developed yet? Is there a solution?

It sounds like it is already too late to prevent this. I don't see the FDA forcing a ban on antibiotics in livestock.

Are animals even fed regular natural food anymore? Anywhere? I will have to look into this some more.

raise your own beef and chickens and slaughter them yourself then deep freeze them in dry ice and you'll be ok

The meat that eats itself ,mmm yummy.
I just cant wait to order a mc spew burger.

Originally posted by desert
...from someone who was three days away from death due to an internal staph infection misdiagnosed by two doctors, caught by the third. Staph can kill! And that was before the spread of anti-biotic resistant staph.

I'm so glad you were diagnosed and treated! So glad your staph wasn't resistant - what's happening now is scary - and unconscionable.

To think that the public should be asked to accept this filth and deal with it is a sad commentary of our times. It's become the trade-off for huge scale meat producers and processors.

But they do, and defend it as acceptable too!

Also....how many people now accept upset stomachs and diarrhea after eating, without realizing improper food handling is the cause. It's not your "system" or the "spices", it's the bacteria.

...Not just food handling - this crap is inside meat and plants - you can't wash it off! At best, you can cook the hell out of everything you eat and hope to kill the mutants.

Originally posted by watchitburn
reply to post by soficrow

 

I in no way meant to detract from the seriousness of this epidemic. Absolutely everyone should be made aware of this. ....But with that being said, I am not going to stop eating meat.

lol - We'd all have to stop eating completely, just to avoid the new mutant super-bugs that are now inside all our food, including veggies and grains.

...Practically everything agri-business does creates new microbial species, and they're getting really dangerous.

Has a solution been developed yet? Is there a solution? ...It sounds like it is already too late to prevent this. I don't see the FDA forcing a ban on antibiotics in livestock.

I fear it's too late - we can't turn back the clock, and we're stuck with what we've already created and released into the world. BUT - it would take off a LOT of biological pressure if we and other lifeforms weren't forced to deal with any more new stuff. ...Our immune systems and adaptive responses are already stressed to the limit.

Antibiotics in Cattle Feed Linked to Superbug
NIGEL HAWKES / The Times of London (UK) 24mar98

www.mindfully.org...

Not to derail your fine thread but I did some homework and found this article. This has been an issue for 13 years. At least. Now I think it is a valuable article and thread to note, but what has changed in those 13 years to eliminate the problem?

And what do people want to do now?

Is there another agend behind this story? Is there something we are missing?

Conspiracies abound!

Originally posted by beezzer

Antibiotics in Cattle Feed Linked to Superbug
NIGEL HAWKES / The Times of London (UK) 24mar98

www.mindfully.org...

Not to derail your fine thread but I did some homework and found this article. This has been an issue for 13 years. At least. Now I think it is a valuable article and thread to note, but what has changed in those 13 years to eliminate the problem?

And what do people want to do now?

Is there another agend behind this story? Is there something we are missing?

Not a derail - history is important.

...Briefly, you're right - the links were clear by the late 1990's: new diseases were emerging, all linked to industrial agriculture and zoonoses; old diseases were mutating and going pandemic, also linked to industrial food production and processing; prions were known to play a role in mutation and microbial evolution as well as human disease, and prion creation, propagation and spread also was linked to industrial processes.

The situation was complex: scientifically, socially and economically. The decision-makers polarized: the bleeding hearts wanted to pull in the reins on industry; corporate industry said no, constraints would threaten national and international economic stability.

Industrial corporate interests won through with GW's election. A Presidential Directive curtailed research on and communication about prions; the "Cheeseburger Bill" prevented oversight and regulation of new and emerging pathogens, including prions; the new Personal Bankruptcy Act dovetailed with new constraints on medical and disability insurance to prevent diagnosis and public awareness; the Personal Responsibility in Health Act tricked people into blaming the victims instead of culpable corporations; and then, when the effects were too large to cover-up any longer, the Global Financial Crisis distracted everyone's attention.

The corporations got their bail-outs, the CEO's got their bonuses and the rest of us have to clean up the expected, predicted mess.

Conspiracies abound!

Oh yeah.