Much delayed posting of a good link or two

Here's a few articles I've put aside to post, and haven't had time for:

How to read medical papers
Applying epi to gang violence
Growing meat in vitro
The feasibility of eradicating malaria
The loss of biodiversity in developing agriculture

No promises to start posting again, just thought I'd clean up my old backlog.

Should it be law?

I'm not going to say if rBST (known most often to laymen as bovine growth hormone) is a good thing or a bad thing for the dairy industry. I'm not going to say if it is harmful to humans or not. I'm not even going to say if it is harmful to cows or not. Mind you, I have opinions on all these topics; I'm just not going to say right now.

What I am going to say is people should be able to choose to avoid it if their little hearts desire. According to this article, some people (with ties to the drug's largest producer, oddly enough), are lobbying to stop "hormone-free" labels.

I could understand, if there were local regulations banning the use of an FDA-approved drugs, lobbying to remove those regulations. Trying to create a regulation against a label that says you don't use those drugs? Unnecessary, wasteful, stupid! Allow people the choice. Maybe this means you lose your market, but that's how capitalism works (at least, in theory): informed people choose where to spend their money. If you can't afford to produce rBST-free milk at the price offered and you can't sell non-rBST-free milk, you need to get out of the dairy business.

At long last

I've been busy again, lately, and haven't really had a chance to weigh in on the humane slaughter issue. Instead of breaking news, then, here's some afterthoughts:

I was not amused by this article. This is fear-mongering, fueled by the fact that most people don't know their burgers are coming from dairy cows (I've never met a layperson who knew that; they're always a bit shocked). The understanding of epidemiology here is particularly egregious:

Dairy cows can also carry some common maladies, including mastitis, a bacterial infection of the udder; foot rot, which they can develop standing for long periods in manure, mud and damp straw; and Johne’s disease.

Scientists believe these diseases are not carried into the human food chain, with one exception: Health and animal scientists are currently debating whether the traits of Johne’s are responsible for Chron’s disease in humans. Chron’s disease is an intestinal disorder that can cause inflammation of the colon, severe abdominal pain, diarrhea and weight loss. Some argue it’s these very problems that prompt farmers to dispatch the cows to the slaughterhouse in the first place.

One: why mention all these "terrible" diseases if they aren't entering the food chain? Two: hate to say it, but milk is a bigger risk than beef for MAP transmission (MAP is the cause of Johne's disease, and is under debate as a contributing factor in Crohn's disease), so I'd rather have them at the slaughterhouse, where the risk of contamination is minimal, than in the milking parlor.

Lesson: don't get your information about your food from the editorial page!

I was very amused by this article. USDA inspectors may not have been doing their job, but that's really no excuse for the Humane Society avoiding their legal responsibility . . . and why were they contacting local DA, then releasing the video on YouTube with national promotion? Sounds like they wanted to appear to do the legal thing while making the biggest publicity. Shame on HSUS!

Humane Society grilled on not advising USDA about Hallmark

By Janie Gabbett on 2/26/2008 for Meatingplace.com

WASHINGTON — Congressmen repeatedly questioned a representative of the Humane Society of the United States on Tuesday about why the group did not immediately inform USDA of video evidence workers were abusing downed cattle at Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Co.

At a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing on food safety, Michael Greger, HSUS director of public health and animal agriculture, said the San Bernardino District Attorney's office asked the group to hold the information until it completed its own investigation. The congressmen, however, said HSUS could have discretely gone to USDA earlier than it did.

Greger hinted at more HSUS exposes, telling the committee the videographer's identity must be guarded so as not to compromise current and future investigations. The Hallmark/Westland video, which was shown at the hearing, resulted in the nation's largest beef recall. (See Hallmark/Westland recalls 143 million lbs of beef — largest in history on Meatingplace.com, Feb. 18, 2008.)

Hallmark/Westland President Steve Mendell did not attend the hearing, declining the committee's request for him to testify. Committee members said they are looking at compelling him to come before the committee sometime in the future.

Greger told the committee that Hallmark workers said in criminal testimony in California that they were pressured by supervisors to get the cows up and into slaughter. Hallmark slaughtered mostly spent dairy cattle, often fatigued after being trucked in from surrounding states.

Members of the subcommittee, which is chaired by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), used the hearing as an opportunity to renew calls for: banning all meat from downer cattle from the food supply, mandatory traceability standards, mandatory recall authority for USDA and the Food and Drug Administration and the creation of a single food safety agency.

William Marler, a Seattle lawyer who represents victims of foodborne illnesses, however, suggested USDA might have actually gone too far with the Hallmark recall.

"Although stunned by the video …I am more stunned that the recall has ballooned to 143 million pounds of meat and is quickly encompassing products that might contain trace amounts of the meat. No people have been sickened. I wonder if resources are better spent elsewhere," he testified before the committee.

A response to the meat industry, minus the shrillness

I've been meaning to write about this article for some time now, but I've been too busy to do it properly. Even now, it'll be brief.

The idea is that we, as Americans, eat too much meat. I would have to agree. You could say we're biased, the author and I: he wrote a vegetarian cookbook, I was a vegetarian for a few years. Still, my experience is that little or no meat in my diet makes me healthier. His research shows that Americans are eating twice as much protein (mostly animal-based) as the (high-end) recommendation. I think we have an argument.

The environmental issue is a touchy one, but he makes his point well -- we produce far too much manure in concentrated areas to spread on fields (some dairy farms are now leasing fields just to spread their manure). We use a lot of water and energy growing and transporting grain to feed livestock. It's not true that all meat production should be banned; there are places in this world, as mentioned in the article, where grass-fed livestock is the only agricultural option. I've been to a couple of those places and believe me, you wouldn't want to be a vegetarian there! We shouldn't deny people a chance to raise their own food, no matter what the moral guilt of a rich society tells us we should do.

And that's really the point -- we, as citizens of a rich country with a wide range of food options, shouldn't be eating so much meat. What should we be eating? To quote another NYT columnist, "eat food, not too much, mostly plants."

International Agents of Food Safety

This seems to be a good idea: if we're going to import food from overseas, we should put it through an equivalent inspection requirement.

I'll admit -- I like this idea, in part, because it will drive up the price for internationally sourced foods, much closer to local foods, which might give people another reason to support their local farmers!

Imagining a theory

Quick update on the cloned-animals-as-food issue: this article contains a scary quote from an FDA scientist.

It is beyond our imagination to even have a theory for why the food is unsafe.

Wow. They can't even imagine a theory. Umm, I don't want the people responsible for protecting our food supply (which mostly consists of imagining threats and counteracting them) unable to imagine a theory here. I can think of a few theories. Not good ones, of course, but he didn't say credible theory -- he said they couldn't imagine a theory.

I hope our FDA guys will start improving their imaginations, fast.

Cloned meat is safe? Or offspring . . . oh, never mind

I've put off blogging for a little while (too much writing in my real job), but I do need to comment about this:

The FDA ruling does not mean you will be eating Beta. It means that people who have spent large amounts of money to clone their best cows will be able to sell you the milk and meat of their offspring. The actual cows are worth too much to butcher.

I'm not taking a stand on this issue -- I just don't want people to be more confused than the media has already made them.

Why typing is good, but can't do everything

One of my friends sent me a link to news about the Listeria outbreak in Massachusetts. I hadn't followed it too closely because it wasn't really a new story to me, but I have studied these things more than most normal people.

In this case, the bacteria that sickened at least 4 and killed 2 was linked to a milk processor by typing, a useful process that can tell us how related 2 cultures of bacteria are. That lets us go in, shut the plant down, find the culprit, spread the horror stories (one that I heard a few years back: cartons used to take waste milk to a swine herd were pressure-washed in the bottling room), and hopefully learn something.

What typing can't do is stop the outbreak before people get sick. For that, we need to rely on processors to follow S.O.P.'s and farmers to control disease within their herds. This is what my research group focuses on, modeling food safety at all the levels of production. No, it's not "bench" research, but it can be useful.

I'm guessing that the plant in this case will find a simple procedural change that led to a Listeria overgrowth. This is why modeling is important; we can predict what changes will do before people have a chance to get sick. No amount of fancy DNA technology will do that.

Please forgive the rant; I get peeved sometimes about the bias against modeling. We are important!

More waiting for a Farm Bill

It's been delayed for a few years because the process is so time-consuming. It's been delayed this year because Congress and Bush can't agree on anything. Oh, wait, it's still going to be delayed, because whatever they turn out is going to be vetoed.

Well, that's legislation for you -- but the ag committee can't do much else until this goes through. That means delays in funding the USDA. The USDA does a number of important things (food inspection, WIC and food stamps, not to mention basic research like mine) that really shouldn't get put on the back burner for too long.

But I guess that's why the bill is so difficult -- it has to cover all these things, too, along with little stuff like subsidies.

Senate passes farm bill, moves to conference under veto threat

By Janie Gabbett on 12/17/2007 for Meatingplace.com

The Senate on Friday voted 79-14 to pass a version of the 2007 farm bill the White House has already threatened to veto, sending the legislation to the House-Senate conference committee to hash out differences and agree a bill that the White House will sign. "This legislation is fundamentally flawed. Unless the House and Senate can come together and craft a measure that contains real reform, we are no closer to a good farm bill than we were before today's passage," Acting Secretary of Agriculture Chuck Conner said in a statement. Conner acknowledged he was disappointed the Senate approved the bill by such a wide margin. Broadly, the Administration opposes the cost of the $286 billion farm bill, which it says includes $22 billion in unfunded commitments and includes $15 billion in new taxes, as well as the fact that it did not limit subsidies to wealthier farm owners as much as the Administration sought. Packer livestock ownership The Senate version of the bill includes a livestock title (Title X) that contains a provision that would only allow meatpackers to own livestock 14 days before slaughter. "We have a number of concerns with key aspects of that whole competition title," Conner said, when asked on a teleconference with reporters if the Administration would seek changes in the packer livestock ownership provision. "We're going to be working very closely with the conferees in both the House and Senate to address this issue very directly as we go into the conference," Mark Keenum, under secretary for farm and foreign agricultural services, told reporters, adding that the provision is, "impeding commerce and trade with a specific commodity, in this situation livestock, and that's a slippery slope." Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) praised the livestock title, saying in a statement, "The bill's livestock title will promote market opportunities for producers; it will protect animal health; and it will strengthen enforcement of the Packers and Stockyards Act." COOL and state-inspected meat Both House and Senate versions of the bill contain mandatory Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) provisions that meat industry groups have agreed they can live with. The House version of the bill includes a provision that would allow some state-inspected meat to cross state lines.

Taking everything into account . . .

. . . you can't.

New research is saying that local foods don't necessarily have a lower carbon footprint. When you consider technical economies of scale (i.e. more efficient transport -- containers on trains instead of boxes in pickups), mass-produced fruits and vegetables shipped across the country use less gas than local ones from small farms. This is based on, for example, the gas per strawberry. Many strawberries makes light footprint.

There are other things the article didn't go into (machinery efficiency, farm supply shipping, etc.) that large monoculture farms have going for them as far as carbon footprint goes. With all of these things, I have to admit that buying all your groceries at Wal-Mart, especially with only one trip a week, uses the least carbon.

If that's your goal.

Me, I eat locally for other reasons. I want to support local farmers and local industry. I want the flavor of the heritage varieties (wonder why they taste better than the shipped ones? flavor and storage value are inversely related for most fruits and veggies). I want to know where my food came from.

Yes, I feel guilty when I drive my car all alone to the farmer's market, only to go to the grocery store once or twice a week on separate trips. I used to bike it, but that was when I lived in Kansas (ah, flatness; the prospect of hauling my shopping up two blocks at 40% grade or more is rather discouraging). I used to do all my shopping on Saturday morning, going without rather than doing quick runs for one ingredient. I need to get back into at least some of those good habits.

Still, I can't help thinking that basing a drastic shift in behaviors (an all-local diet, for example) on one good-hearted idea is dooming it to failure. As soon as you start bringing in other calculations, you'll run into complications, realize how complicated life is, and give up. Yes, we need to consider confounders. We still need to act, though, and it's up to you what confounders you use in your analysis.

Controlling(?) E. coli

Someone was telling me last night about her friend's revolutionary work on controlling pre-harvest E. coli in cattle by feeding hay for a few days. I had to break it to her that it's common knowledge, now, that that works. There are probably thousands of studies going on right now to figure out E. coli reduction in cattle.

With all this work, though, who do people trust? The activists.

Yes, the people (in some cases) who say raw milk is healthier than pasteurized, or veganism is healthier than carnivorism, or homeopathy works. I'll grant them homeopathy -- there is a documented placebo effect if people believe something will work. Still, less than half surveyed trust the government on food safety! That technically includes me right now: I work for a land-grant university, studying pre-harvest food safety. But government isn't looking out for us like the activists are . . . I'm just going to stop now . . .

Less than half Americans see meat safety regulations as adequate: survey

By Janie Gabbett on 12/6/2007 for Meatingplace.com

In the wake of this year's spike in ground beef recalls, fewer Americans are confident the government has adequate food safety regulations for meat and poultry, according to a new GfK Roper Public Affairs and Media survey.

The telephone survey, commissioned by The Worldcom Public Relations Group, showed only 46 percent of 1,009 adults polled were confident meat and poultry were adequately regulated, compared to 48 percent for seafood, 57 percent for dairy, 58 percent for fruits and vegetables and 65 percent for cereals and grains.

At an average of 50 percent, confidence in food regulation in general ranked below every other category polled, other than toys (37 percent).

Trusting activists

The survey also found that U.S. consumers have more faith in activists and retail grocers than either the government or food companies when it comes to providing information about food choices.

While 64 percent said advocates and activist groups have consumers' best interests in mind when providing information about food choices, 62 percent felt that way about grocers, 53 percent about food manufacturers, 47 percent about the U.S. government and 26 percent about fast food companies.

"These results support the idea that activists may have been successful in dominating discussions about food policy," said Bob Giblin, a senior public relations counselor and research director who tracks food and agricultural issues for Morgan&Myers.

Slow food revival? Nah.

A friend was just asking me if slow food was as popular out East as it was back (for him) West. This seems to say that no, slow food isn't overly popular in the US in general.

I'm very worried by the statistic that 25% of family dinners are at restaurants. 1) You don't teach your kids to cook by going to a restaurant. 2) That probably includes (and is overwhelmed by) fast-food restaurants. Eek.

Americans like hamburgers, locally grown and convenience foods: poll

By Janie Gabbett on 11/8/2007 for Meatingplace.com

According to PARADE magazine's biennial "What America Eats" survey, 21 percent of Americans would choose a hamburger as their only food on a deserted island.

Respondents to the survey of 2001 Americans over 18 years of age were given a choice of seven foods. Pizza was the top choice at 37 percent, followed by hamburger (21 percent), fruit (17 percent), veggies (12 percent), chocolate (8 percent), apple pie (3 percent) and French fries (2 percent).

The survey also found that 82 percent of Americans use convenience foods (pre-made fresh, frozen, refrigerated, canned or packaged) and 22 percent are using more of such foods than a year ago. While 46 percent believe these foods are more expensive, 71 percent said the cost is worth it for the time saved.

Local, natural and green

The movement towards eating foods grown locally is "one of the hottest culinary trends to come along in years," according to the survey, which cited recent E. coli scares and tainted food from China as factors driving Americans to think about where their food comes from and how it is grown.

When shopping for groceries, 38 percent of respondents said that all-natural claims are important, while 34 percent said recyclable packaging is a big factor and 32 percent said "environmentally friendly" labels are an important purchasing consideration. And 70 percent said they are at least somewhat likely to buy products that won't harm the environment, even if they cost more.

Where we eat

• 87 percent said they eat home-cooked food for dinner, 5 percent chose restaurant take-out and only 1 percent eat supermarket-prepared meals
• 81 percent said they eat breakfast at home, but 59 percent admit they skip it and 4 percent eat it in a restaurant
• 60 percent eat lunch at home, with 36 percent skipping it and 10 percent in a restaurant
• 25 percent of family dinners are at a restaurant and only 5 percent don't eat dinner

More men in the kitchen

Men are doing more grocery shopping and cooking more meals than 20 years ago. The survey said 71 percent of women now do the grocery shopping versus 93 percent 20 years ago, and 68 percent of women said they prep and cook food for their household versus 94 percent two decades ago.

Fantasy meals

If a TV family could join them for dinner, 29 percent of respondents picked the cast of "Friends", while 24 percent preferred "The Brady Bunch" and 15 percent want to eat with "The Simpsons." Only 7 percent want to eat with The Costanzas from "Seinfeld".

Rachael Ray was the pick (38 percent) for the chef Americans want to cook their dinner, followed by (30 percent) Emeril Lagasse.

And if calories and nutrition were no object, 26 percent of Americans would most often eat pizza, 20 percent Chinese food, 14 percent fried chicken, 10 percent fast-food hamburgers and 9 percent deli sandwiches or wraps. A hot dog with the works was the choice of 3 percent of those polled.

The survey was sponsored in part by Sara Lee Food and Beverage and conducted by Mark Clements Research Inc.

Translation: foreigners are dirty!

Okay, this doesn't really surprise me. What does surprise me is that this hasn't come up before. The real lesson: cook your meat fully (and don't drink raw milk -- the population of poultry workers and that of milkers isn't all that different).

More than 200 test positive for TB at poultry plant

By Alicia Karapetian on 11/5/2007 for Meatingplace.com

Some 28 percent of the 765 employees screened for tuberculosis at one of Wayne Farms LLC's poultry processing facilities in Decatur, Ala., tested positive, the Decatur Daily reported.

Final testing was completed at the Alabama State Department of Public Health's Tubrerculosis Control Division Wednesday, with a total of 212 positive skin tests.

The testing was done in two batches. On Oct. 11, 167 employees were tested, resulting in 47 positive skin tests, one of which was an active, and contagious, case.

More recently, the final group of tests was completed last week, which resulted in 167 positive skin tests from a pool of 598 samples. Those most recently tested and with positive skin tests will receive chest X-rays on Thursday to determine if any of those cases are active and contagious, according to the Decatur Daily.

Scott Jones, interim director at the state's TB division told the Decatur Daily that he is not surprised by the number of positive skin tests given that many of the workers at the facility were born outside of the United States.

Alternative antibiotics

Yes, you could get a cilantro film on your chicken that blocks antibacterial growth, to go with the cranberries! Someday, at least . . . I love this idea. No excess chemicals to safety-test, no antibiotic residues and resistance, no scary-scary radiation, just some spices and safer products.

Then again, as they say, we can't replace best management practices with fancy films -- basic food safety principles are still optimal.

Answer: No.

The New York Times is asking if raw milk should be legal. Asking with every intention, it appears, of convincing us that it should. Although they cite a few of the health risks, they focus on the 'brave' families breaking the law (or bending) to get raw milk in NYC. 'It tastes better!' 'It may have health benefits!'

Let me make this absolutely clear: there are no health benefits to drinking raw milk. It does not have any enzymes or bacteria that you need in order to drink milk. It is not enriched, like commercial milk, with vitamins A and D. It does not guarantee a better source, being closer to nature, environmentally-friendly farming, or any other advantage.

Not that it is universally unsafe -- I must admit that I drank raw milk as a child living on a dairy farm. I came out healthy, with a strong immune system. I was lucky.

However, now that I know what I know about food safety, I would never, ever give a child raw milk. Bad bacteria, people! Death! I have a feeling that the woman who said she drank raw milk while pregnant also gave up cold cuts -- Listeria lives in both! It causes abortions! Bad!

Trust me on this: you have no reason to drink raw milk.

Should it be illegal, though? Plenty of thinks I don't like are perfectly legal, and I'm not going to petition for their illegality. Raw milk, however, is a public health concern. When you get sick from drinking raw milk, you cost the health care system money. You cost our economy your work time while you're out sick. In the military, they refer to this as rendering yourself unfit for service. Gray area, in civilian affairs, but, if nothing else, we should be protecting these children. Right? Any law is okay if it protects children . . .

Or you could just irradiate it . . .

Well, what won't they think of next? Cranberry concentrate apparently slows bacterial growth without altering meat flavor. Of course, irradiation would do even better . . . but radiating your meat would make you radioactive, right? And cranberries -- it's like you get a serving of fruit in your hamburger!

Sometimes, I just . . .

Cranberries shown to prevent bacteria growth in hamburgers without affecting taste

By Ann Bagel Storck on 8/6/2007 for Meatingplace.com

Building a better burger usually involves ingredients like lettuce, tomato and cheese, but new research shows cranberries might be the most important addition of all. Dr. Vivian Chi Hua Wu at the University of Maine led a study that found cranberries can help reduce the growth of bacteria such as salmonella and E. coli in beef patties without affecting how burgers taste. In a study presented last year at the Institute of Food Technologists show, researchers added cranberry concentrate to samples of raw ground beef tainted with several types of bacteria that frequently cause food-related illness. After observing the ground beef over several days, scientists discovered that the cranberry concentrate significantly reduced the growth of salmonella, E. coli and other dangerous bacteria in the beef. In the new study, Wu and her colleagues reproduced these results with a strain of pathogenic E. coli and tested the effect of different amounts of cranberry on the taste of burgers. "We focused on taste and found that it wasn't sacrificed," Wu said. "This is great news for consumers who are seeking natural alternatives to chemical additives in food."

Pregnancy and beef?

This is ridiculous. How many possible sources of bias are there in this study? Looking at the diets of women when they were pregnant long enough ago that they are now grandmothers!?!? And assuming that the current levels of hormones in beef were present then. And that no other possible sources of anything that would affect development might have been present. And that the women even remember accurately how much beef they ate. Bad epi!

Study links beef-eating moms to sons with low sperm counts; AMI objects

By Ann Bagel Storck on 3/28/2007 for Meatingplace.com

Men whose mothers ate a lot of beef during pregnancy are more likely to have low sperm counts and fertility problems, according to a report in the journal Human Reproduction. Dr. Shanna H. Swan of the University of Rochester Medical Center, the report's author, identified anabolic steroids used to fatten cattle, pesticides and other environmental contaminants as possible causes of the problems. Swan and her colleagues studied 387 partners of pregnant women in five U.S. cities. Each man provided a sperm sample, and his mother completed a questionnaire about what she ate during her pregnancy. On average, the mothers reported eating beef about 4.5 times weekly and other meats less frequently. For women who ate beef at least seven times a week, the son's sperm averaged 24.3 percent below normal. Although those sons did produce a pregnancy, they were three times as likely to have consulted a fertility doctor. AMI's criticism The American Meat Institute advised that the study be viewed with "a giant dose of skepticism." Its most glaring fault, AMI said, was its "purely speculative conclusion" that chemical components in the beef were linked to the fertility problems. "The study does not include any laboratory analysis of the compounds suggested to be contained in beef, much less the beef that may have been consumed by the mothers decades ago," said Randy Huffman, AMI Foundation vice president of scientific affairs. AMI also criticized the validity of women "of advanced age" recalling what they ate decades ago. Swan conceded that women may have difficulty remembering their diets after such a passage of time, but added, "When you are pregnant, you are very aware of what you eat." Swan also emphasized that the study needs to be confirmed, and it is too soon to recommend that pregnant women avoid eating beef.

Dipsticks!

I love this idea. And the name. What fun! Oh, and useful . . .

Researchers hope dipstick holds the key to food poisoning prevention

By Ann Bagel Storck on 3/26/2007 for Meatingplace.com

Researchers at the University of South Carolina have developed a disposable dipstick that can detect whether a food is safe to eat or whether it has spoiled to the extent that it could cause food poisoning.

The dipstick is made of polymers that change color in the presence of nonvolatile biogenic amines, which are generated during the bacterial decay of food proteins. In a paper presented at a national meeting of the American Chemical Society in Chicago, the researchers said the amines provide an indirect measurement of the extent of food spoilage.

The goal is to eventually market the dipstick as a test kit that consumers could use at home or in restaurants.

You mean that resistance might just be in the population?

Granted, this is from a meat industry website, so they're not going to be too critical:

Study finds antibiotic resistance in poultry even when antibiotics were not used

By Alicia Karapetian on 3/8/2007 for Meatingplace.com

A surprising finding by a team of University of Georgia scientists suggests that curbing the use of antibiotics on poultry farms will do little, if anything, to reduce rates of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that have the potential to threaten human health.

Dr. Margie Lee, professor in the UGA College of Veterinary Medicine, and her colleagues have found that chickens raised on antibiotic-free farms, and even those raised under pristine laboratory conditions, have high levels of bacteria that are resistant to common antibiotics. Her findings, published in the March issue of the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology, suggest that poultry come to the farm harboring resistant bacteria, possibly acquired as they were developing in their eggs.

"The resistances don't necessarily come from antibiotic use in the birds that we eat," Lee said, "so banning antibiotic use on the farm isn't going to help. You have to put in some work before that."

Lee and her team sampled droppings from more than 140,000 birds under four different conditions:

• 1. commercial flocks that had been given antibiotics;
• 2. commercial flocks that had not been given antibiotics;
• 3. flocks raised in a lab that had been given antibiotics;
• 4. flocks raised in a lab that had not been given antibiotics.

The researchers examined levels of antibiotic resistance in normal intestinal bacteria that do not cause human illness and, in a companion study published in May in the same journal, also examined levels of drug-resistant campylobacter bacteria, a common foodborne cause of diarrhea, cramping and abdominal pain.

The meat industry is often blamed for all antibiotic resistance, but that really is rather unfair; it's possible that animals are picking up resistant strains from people who don't think it's necessary to finish their course of antibiotics when their infection clears up. But that's just my bias.

Some sense? returns to surveillance

From today's news:

USDA to close BSE lab

By Tom Johnston on 2/26/2007 for Meatingplace.com

Saying the prevalence of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in the U.S. cattle herd is "extraordinarily low," and doesn't warrant ongoing costly testing and tracking programs, USDA will shutter the Pacific Northwest's only BSE testing laboratory on March 1.

The Washington State University lab opened after the nation's first BSE case was discovered in nearby Yakima Valley in December 2003, but only two other infected cows have been found, even after the testing of 759,000 animals, including 45,000 in the Northwest.

USDA Spokewoman Andrea McNally told the Associated Press the lack of additional cases spurred the agency's decision to downsize the program and target only 40,000 animals per year. The government plans to close the WSU facility and several others as part of a plan to cut testing by more than 90 percent.

This sounds like sense, right? We're not finding them, and the one's we've found were probably sporadic cases, so our BSE scare died with only a questionable epidemic (by definition, we had an epidemic, but practically, we didn't). So we cut down testing from (on average) over 200,000 animals a year to testing 40,000. We shut down extraneous testing facilities. We save the taxpayer's dollar.

Well, maybe. According to NASS, 4,775 cattle were slaughtered in 1995 (the last year with available data). If we wanted to find a single positive animal in that group, with a perfect test, we would need to test 3,707 animals every year at slaughter. We don't have a perfect test, but we don't know its sensitivity; with the less-than-perfect specificity of our screening test, we'd get a lot of false positives and waste a lot of money. Still, 3,707 is a lot fewer than 40,000.

So what if we're trying to detect BSE in the entire country. According to NASS (again), there were 106,112,000 cattle in the US on January 1, 2006. To detect a single positive animal in that group, with a perfect test, we would need to test just over 1,000,000 animals. That's a lot more than 40,000, and it would just go up with imperfect sensitivity.

So what is the best option? Are we just going midway between 4,000 and 1,000,000 by choosing 40,000? Are we basing that estimate on a different number (maybe the number of downer cows per year)? Or are we playing politics with diagnostics . . . again?