It's happening right now... again. There are people who are sick due to bacteria contaminated food- ground turkey. And not just any old bacteria- the ground turkey is contaminated with Salmonella Heidelberg which is a drug-resistant strain of salmonella. Drug-resistant as in "super-bug," exactly what I had mentioned in the posts earlier this week. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, one of the organizations that brought suit on May 25th of this year against the FDA for allowing the use of antibiotics in healthy feedlot animals, made a request of the USDA two months ago to inspect turkey for the presence of this drug-resistant strain of bacteria. The USDA has not acted on that recommendation.
On July 21 the Center for Disease Control and the USDA connected the outbreak to the Cargill turkey grinding plant in Springvale, Arkansas, but did not call Cargill's lawyers until July 29. Why the delay? They say they had to determine the concentration of the salmonella contamination- because a lot of ground turkey is contaminated with salmonella- that is a fact, so they wanted to be sure that there was a LOT of salmonella in this batch. And there was, because Cargill recalled 36 millions pounds of the stuff.
Dr. Elizabeth Hagan, under secretary for food safety at the American Farm Bureau said that "public health must be at the heart of all lawmakers." Too bad the reporter who jotted down that comment didn't ask Dr. Hagan why the American Farm Bureau vehemently opposes any restriction on feeding antibiotics to farm animals. Apparently public health is not at the heart of the American Farm Bureau.
Representative Louise Slaughter (D-NY), the only microbiologist in the U. S. House, has re-introduced legislation limiting the use of antibiotics in healthy feedlot animals. Hopefully it will meet with a better fate than last time, when the American Farm Bureau and the fat cats running the big factory farms and the pharmaceutical industry joined forces to defeat it through the influence they hold over our representatives in Washington.. (The legislation Rep. Slaughter introduced is referred to as PAMTA- Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act).
Not to worry, fat cats. An economist who used to work for ConAgra foods described the American consumer as having a relatively short-term memory. They'll stop buying ground turkey for awhile, he said, then when the shelves are restocked they'll buy again. So glad we don't disappoint them.... dependable that's what we are! Too bad we can't depend on them!
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