The case underscores one of the major problems with CAFOs, which is the massive amount of manure they produce and the manners by which operators dispose of it, which have major environmental implications. According to the EPA, “a single dairy cow produces approximately 120 pounds of wet manure per day,” which is “equivalent to that of 20-40 people.” The quantity of manure produced by one dairy cow can be multiplied on a CAFO by hundreds or, in some cases, thousands of heads. This higher concentration of CAFO animals leads to a higher concentration of animal waste, a problem that holds true for all types of livestock raised in these operations. As CARE describes the scale of the waste problem:

Operations like the Nelson Faria Dairy produce as much waste as a city of over 200,000 people. Unlike cities, however, which treat their wastes, the dairy industry applies manure to agricultural fields primarily to get rid of it.

In moderation, manure is a great soil fertilizer, but the sheer amount (and concentration) of untreated waste generated by CAFOs is a serious liability. When too much manure is spread out over fields for soil to properly absorb it, or when manure lagoons leak, overflow or rupture, rain and stormwater runoff can carry the waste into groundwater and nearby waterways. This over-application or discharge of CAFO animal waste is an egregious example of nonpoint source (NPS) pollution, where the source(s) is diffuse and can have a wide distribution area. Untreated animal waste is a hazard for both public health and ecosystems because it can contain harmful quantities of nutrients, pathogens and heavy metals. (Ecocentric has covered the problems associated with large amounts of untreated CAFO animal waste.)

The case of the improper handling of manure on the Nelson Faria Dairy is typical of the CAFO industry. While state and federal animal waste rules exist, their enforcement is lax at best. As CARE President, Helen Reddout, explained:

The Washington Department of Agriculture had recently inspected the dairy and found that it was doing an excellent job managing its manure. Nothing could be further from the truth…It is now time for the agencies who are supposed to be protecting our health to follow the precedent set by this Order. Our state and federal laws were aimed at protecting people and now it’s time for the agencies responsible for safeguarding public health to do just that.

Reddout goes on to explain the reality of state agency CAFO inspections:

Washington Departments of Ecology and Agriculture (WSDA) are supposed to monitor and regulate the dairy industry to ensure that operations do not harm public health or the environment. Unfortunately, inspections often involve nothing more than cursory visits by WSDA staff. If problems are found, dairy owners receive only a slap on the wrist, at best.

The hope is that this court victory against CAFO manure handling and pollution – little mentioned in the media – will help set a precedent toward better practices, regulation and enforcement of the CAFO industry. Reddout acknowledges that this court victory is one small step, albeit an important one, that shows that CAFOs aren’t above the law and puts them on notice for pollution practices, a particularly big deal for the economically (and thus politically) strong Yakima Valley dairy industry. Based on the compelling evidence of agricultural water contamination in the Lower Yakima Valley, and bolstered by the recent ruling, the EPA selected the area for inclusion in a study monitoring nitrate pollution in groundwater. Reddout expects the EPA report to be released in late Spring 2012.

CARE and their allies in the Royal City area deserve our congratulations for this major legal victory that may ultimately inspire a regulatory approach to CAFOs capable of safeguarding human and ecological health. Government agencies must acknowledge the great harm cased by CAFO pollution and hold the industry accountable for the true costs CAFOs impose upon the public.

As expressed by CARE’s lead attorney, Charlie Tebbutt, “Citizens have once again proven that the CAFO industry is a huge polluter. It is time for the state agencies to step up.”

To find out how many CAFOs are in your area, check out Food & Water Watch’s Factory Farm Map:

http://www.factoryfarmmap.org/

**********

Legal Documents

Memorandum of Decision (PDF)

Order of Decision (PDF)

Background and Resources

Hidden Wells, Dirty Waters (Yakima Herald online resource that includes a contaminated well  map and various investigative reports on the issue.)

“Farmers Put up Stink Over Stench” (background article from Seattle Times, Wednesday, July 7, 2004)

Socially Responsible Agricultural Project – Washington

Originally published on Ecocentric

“Although few Americans outside of the livestock industry have ever heard of ractopamine, the drug is controversial,” Bottemiller writes. “Fed to an estimated 60 to 80 percent of pigs in the United States, it has sickened or killed more of them than any other livestock drug on the market, Food and Drug Administration records show. Cattle and turkeys have also suffered high numbers of illnesses from the drug.”

According to the story, USDA meat inspectors have reported an increase in “downer pigs”–livestock that is unable to walk–who have been fed ractopamine. On Monday, the Supreme Court unanimously voted down a California ban on “downer” livestock being used in the food supply, on the basis of a federal preemption.

Bottemiller explains that ractopomine acts like a stress hormone, increasing heart rate and relaxing blood vessels. Its use in livestock agriculture produces up to 10 percent more meat, raising profits $2 per head. Though the drug has not been considered for human use, it is administered up until slaughter, and minute traces have been found in meat.

While these amounts have not exceeded the threshold the FDA has deemed safe, there is no allowance for the drug in the E.U. and China, where 70 percent of the world’s pork is consumed, and where the drug is currently banned. Acceptance of meat from animals raised on ractopamine in world markets has become a focus for U.S. trade officials. Bottemiller writes: “Resolving the impasse is now a top agricultural trade priority for the Obama administration, which is trying to boost exports and help revive the economy.”

At the heart of the trade dispute lies questions about the safety of the drug. Elanco, the maker of ractopamine, sold under the name Paylean, conducted the studies considered before approval of the drug in 2000, and has reported “no averse effects were observed for any treatments.” However, within a few years of the drug’s approval, the FDA received hundreds of reports from farmers, veterinarians, and USDA inspectors of sickened pigs.

Now the issue remains at an impasse at the U.N.’s Codex Alimentarius Commission, which sets global food-safety guidelines. The commission has sought to set a standard for residue levels of ractopamine in meat. With such standards in place, Washington would be in a position to challenge countries with bans on ractopamine at the World Trade Organization. China and the E.U. are the main countries blocking the residue limit at Codex. In China, organ meats, which contain the highest traces of the drug, are popular fare, and in the E.U. officials do not want to risk public outcry by importing meat raised with growth-promoting drugs, which are illegal there.

Bottemiller reported this story in conjunction with the Food & Environment Reporting Network, the first and only independent, non-profit news organization that produces investigative journalism in the critically underreported areas of food, agriculture, and environmental health. This is the second story of the Food & Environment Reporting Network, previous stories can be found here. [Full disclosure: I am the Managing Editor of that venture.]

You can read the full report here at MSNBC.com. You can also find additional reporting here on testing of ractopamine as well as more details about the process underway at Codex here on the Food & Environment Reporting Network’s Web site.

The cephalosporin class of drugs is used to treat a variety of serious conditions, including skin infections, urinary tract infections, pneumonia, abdominal infections, bone infections, pelvic inflammatory disease and meningitis.

Of all drugs prescribed to outpatients, 14 percent are from the cephalosporin class.

“Newer cephalosporins are used in the hospital setting to treat seriously ill patients with life-threatening disease,” according to FDA.

Mounting scientific evidence has shown that the overuse of cephalosporin in food animals is contributing to the development of drug-resistant strains of these bacteria.

“If cephalosporins are not effective in treating these diseases,” said FDA in a statement Wednesday, “doctors may have to use drugs that are not as effective or that have greater side effects.”

Two food borne illnesses–Salmonella and Shigella infections–are commonly treated with these drugs. It is via these bacteria that cephalosporin resistance is thought to be transmitted from animals to humans.

“It is likely that the extralabel use of cephalosporins in certain food-producing animal species is contributing to the emergence of cephalosporin-resistant zoonotic foodborne bacteria,” reads the FDA rule.

Properties of resistance can then be transmitted from one bacteria to another.

“What the science is telling us is that these bacteria all communicate and share information with each other and they pass along these resistance genes, and that’s a really troubling thing,” said Laura Rogers of Pew Charitable Trusts, a public policy watchdog. Rogers is project director for the organization’s Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming.

And once bacteria develop resistance to one type of cephalosporin, they can become resistant to others.

“Resistance to certain cephalosporins is of particular public health concern in light of the evidence of cross-resistance among drugs in the cephalosporin class,” FDA explains in its rule.

The agency is not forbidding the use of these drugs in animals outright, but is eliminating “extra-label” or “off-label” use, unapproved uses that may contribute to antibiotic resistance.

The newly prohibited uses include:

However, cephalosporins will still be permitted for use in the following scenarios:

These exceptions to the prohibition of extra-label uses are new to FDA’s proposed rule on cephalosporins. The agency issued an earlier version of this rule in June of 2008, but withdrew it after it met with criticism because it outlawed uses of the drug that did not lead to antimicrobial resistance.

FDA’s new order, scheduled to go into effect in April, follows a notice published in the Federal Register just before the holidays that indicated the agency was backing away from a 1977 announcement that it had decided not to withdraw penicillin and tetracyclines in animal feed.

The agency said it was planning to “focus its efforts for now on the potential for voluntary reform and the promotion of the judicious use of antimicrobials in the interest of public health.”

In November, to the dismay of consumer and sustainable agriculture advocates, the FDA rejected two petitions to ban certain antibiotics from being used in food animal production. It said it was “currently pursuing other alternatives to address the issue of antimicrobial resistance related to the production use of antimicrobials in animal agriculture.”

But in announcing the new order Wednesday, Dr. Michael Taylor, the FDA’s commissioner of foods, said, “We believe this is an imperative step in preserving the effectiveness of this class of important antimicrobials that takes into account the need to protect the health of both humans and animals.”

The Pew Campaign praised FDA’s latest announcement, saying it targets cephalosporin use where it is most abused.

“I think this is acknowledging that there have been some misuses of the drug,” said Gale Hansen, senior officer of Pew’s Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming.

Each year, 9 billion broiler eggs are processed in America, and the majority of them are injected with cephalosporins. The drug is also widely administered to cattle for disease prevention. These pratices will be banned under the new rule.

However, other consumer advocates pointed out that cephalosporins make up only a small percent of all antibiotics administered to livestock for purposes such as boosting growth.

In fact, cephalosporins account for .2 percent of antibiotics administered to animals domestically each year.

Consumer groups criticized FDA for not including in its restriction other drugs that have also been shown to promote antimicrobial resistance.

“It’s high time that the FDA wakes up to the dangers of non-therapeutic uses that all antibiotics pose to our health and the safety of our food supply,” said Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety, in a statement Wednesday.

But despite cephalosporin’s small share of the animal antibiotic pie, Rogers points out that the drug has large implications for human health.

“Cephalosporins may not be used as extensively as some other drugs, but these drugs are critically important to human health, and so we need to protect them and use them as judiciously as possible,” she said.

Other consumer advocates agree that these restrictions are indeed necessary, but say they have been too long in coming.

“The order prohibiting certain uses of cephalosporin in many food-producing animals is clearly warranted, though it may be too little, and it is definitely too late,” said Caroline Smith DeWaal, Food Safety Director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) in a statement Wednesday.

U.S. Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-NY, a microbiologist who has sponsored bills aimed at preserving antibiotics’ effectiveness for treating human disease, was even more critical of the FDA’s new order.

In a statement she said the rule addresses “just the tip of the iceberg” and noted that the announcement comes three years after the FDA determined that extra-label use in food animal production posed a public health threat.

“This is a modest first step by FDA,” she wrote. “We don’t have time for the FDA to ploddingly take half-measures. We are staring at a massive public health threat in the rise of antibiotic-resistant superbugs. We need to start acting with the swiftness and decisiveness this problem deserves.”

CSPI pointed out that at least five foodborne outbreaks since 2001 have been linked to cephalosporin-resistant Salmonella. These outbreaks resulted in more than 200 illnesses and one death.

FDA noted in its question and answer document on the rule that restrictions have already been placed on 14 other drugs thought to contribute to antimicrobial resistance, and that the agency continues to promote the “judicious use” of animal antibiotics, as evidenced by its Draft Guidelines on animal antibiotic use issued in 2010.

“This action is among a number of ongoing FDA activities and initiatives intended to address concerns about the use of antimicrobial drugs in animal agriculture,” says the agency’s Q&A page.

A 60-day comment period on the new rule will run from Jan. 6 to March 6. The FDA said it will take those comments into consideration before the new order goes into effect April 5.

Originally published on Food Safety News

This is a sorry end to a process that began in 1977 (!), but McKenna created an excellent timeline that traces the history of the issue back to the 1950s. In 2009, the Obama administration breathed new life into a moribund process because the top two Obama appointees at the FDA, Commissioner Margaret Hamburg and her then-deputy Joshua Sharfstein, strongly supported restricting antibiotic use in agriculture.

But despite Hamburg and Sharfstein’s many supportive statements, the FDA has only produced a draft set of “voluntary” guidelines. And, with this latest announcement, it looks like that’s as far as they’re willing to go.

Inaction has consequences: According to the vast majority of microbiologists and public health experts, restrictions on agricultural uses are key to preserving the effectiveness of antibiotics as well as to preventing the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria like MRSA and salmonella Heidelberg (cause of last summer’s record-breaking ground turkey recall). And it’s no small dosage: Every year 29 million pounds of antibiotics are given to animals — often via their feed. That figure represents 80 percent of all antibiotics used in the U.S.

Consumer groups like the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Pew Charitable Trusts have been calling for an end to the practice for years. But it’s not just outsiders who are fed up with the agency’s work on this issue; the administration’s own watchdog group, the Government Accountability Office, recently gave the agency a failing grade in the subject.

In many ways, this issue parallels the ongoing battle over BPA, the endocrine-disrupting chemical used in food packaging, plastics, and register receipts. When finally pushed to ban the chemical, the FDA declared that “its hands were tied” by regulatory hurdles and jurisdictional questions. Yet soon after, the industry lobbying group American Chemical Council responded to consumer anger and petitioned the agency to go ahead and ban BPA. Only then did the FDA indicate it would follow through.

In other words, the FDA is admitting that as long as the industry opposes it, the agency can’t keep antibiotics out of our meat and dairy products (nor, for that matter, can it ensure that antibiotics will remain effective). It’s also admitting it has no real power over the industries it regulates. If the agency continues to favor industry’s concerns over the public health, it begs the question: Who exactly is looking out for us?

On the brighter side, several organizations, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, and Public Citizen have actually filed a lawsuit against the FDA demanding the agency restrict antibiotics in animals. This is promising, because courts have shown more interest in defending science than the federal agencies (see this example from last year regarding rBST/rBGH in milk).

So it may just fall to a federal judge to determine what’s truly good for the public interest. Of course, it would be nice if the agency actually tasked with that responsibility would step up to the plate. But I guess that’s just too much to ask.

Originally published on Grist

UEP, which represents 87 percent of domestic egg production, and HSUS are jointly petitioning Congress to create national animal welfare standards for egg production, notably transitioning from battery cages to enriched housing systems, including perches, nesting boxes, and scratching areas that provide laying hens almost double the amount of space than current systems.

The groups want to amend the Egg Products Inspection Act to mandate standards they agreed to in a landmark agreement in July. Eggs produced under conditions that don’t meet the new standards would not be allowed for sale in the U.S. under the new proposal, which would fully phase out battery cages by 2029.

Egg producers say they’re seeking the national standards in the face of a growing patchwork of varying state laws and regulations. Livestock groups are not pleased about the idea, which they fear will create a precedent for more federal regulations on livestock care.

In a letter to the House Agriculture Committee sent last week, eight leading livestock groups blasted the proposal, saying that it would impose “costly and unnecessary animal rights mandates,” according to a Feedstuffs report.

Livestock interest groups said that the uniform standards would ensure that “Congress will be in the egg business for years to come” and even called the proposal “an unconscionable federal overreach.” The groups argue the new standards’ $10 billion price tag would eliminate jobs and reduce consumer choice.

The letter was signed by the Egg Farmers of America, which represents a small fraction of the egg industry, the American Farm Bureau Federation, National Farmers Union, American Sheep Industry Association, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, National Milk Producers Federation, National Pork Producers Council and National Turkey Federation, according to Feedstuffs.

United Egg Producers fired back Thursday with their own letters to both agriculture committees on Capitol Hill.

“Although we respect the right of the livestock groups to make their views known, the letter provides an overheated and distorted view of an initiative that is strongly supported by U.S. egg farmers,” said the letter.

In their rebuttal, UEP called the fear of setting a precedent for burdensome regulation as “hypothetical and baseless.”

“We hope Congress will realize that we are seeking legislation only for the egg industry,” continues the letter. “Both we and HSUS will oppose efforts to bring any other livestock or poultry species into the legislation.”

When the deal was announced in July, egg industry representatives said they would be closely monitoring and studying the humane standards’ impact on food safety.

“We have to make sure that we’re not giving up anything on the food safety front,” said a leading executive, who added that the industry would still be following the new U.S. Food and Drug Administration guidelines.

Originally published on Food Safety News

On Monday afternoon a coalition of 11 food safety, environmental, consumer and fisheries organizations sent a letter to the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) calling for a halt to its approval of a genetically engineered (GE) salmon after learning that the company’s–AquaBounty Technologies, Inc.–research site was contaminated with a new strain of Infectious Salmon Anaemia (ISA), the deadly fish flu that is devastating fish stocks around the world.

“This new information calls into question the reliability of AquaBounty’s data and the validity of its claims that their fish are safe for the environment” said Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director of the Center for Food Safety. “The FDA must respond appropriately and conduct their own environmental impact statement that looks at a broad range of environmental risks from these genetically engineered salmon, including the risk of spreading diseases such as ISA and antibiotic use for other diseases.”

AquaBounty has claimed that the company’s process for raising GE fish is safer than traditional aquaculture.  However, documents that were revealed last week indicate that their production site was found by Canadian Authorities to have been contaminated in Nov. 2009.  This information was hidden from the public and potentially FDA and other Federal agencies consulting on the GE salmon application. ISA is a deadly disease and is classified as a ‘Listed’ disease by the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE)–alongside diseases such as Anthrax, Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), Foot and mouth disease, rabies, sheep pox, swine fever, avian influenza, West Nile fever, scrapie, fowl cholera, bovine tuberculosis and myxomatosis.

“Infectious Salmon Anaemia threatens wild fisheries around the world and the communities whose livelihood depend on those fish” said Erich Pica, President of Friends of the Earth US. “ISA infections in Chile cost the industry around two billion dollars. A similar infection in Canada and the U.S. could be the last blow to wild Atlantic salmon populations and bring a collapse in wild salmon fisheries.”

The December 19 letter urged FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg to release all health data on AquaBounty’s GE salmon and to suspend any approval actions until all the data is disclosed and the public has an opportunity to review the data. Additionally, the coalition asked the FDA to conduct a full environmental impact statement that includes review of the effect of fish diseases, like ISA, on wild fish populations that might come into contact with the AquaBounty fish. Currently, the FDA has only performed a less comprehensive environmental risk assessment.

This news comes on the heels of a Senate subcommittee hearing held last Thursday on the environmental risks of GE fish, the first hearing of its kind in Congress.

Originally published on the Center for Food Safety’s blog

On December 3, 1984, more than 8,000 people died in Bhopal, India when a pesticide manufacturing plant owned and operated by Union Carbide Corporation (now Dow Chemical) exploded in the middle of the night. It was one of the worst industrial disasters in history. In the 27 years since, at least 20,000 more have died as a result of this one event and the area surrounding the plant remains a toxic waste site.

People know about Bhopal like they know about Chernobyl. What many don’t know is that the night after the explosion, the company’s CEO hopped on a private jet and fled the country and Dow Chemical has yet to be held accountable. Nearly three decades have passed and the people of Bhopal have yet to see justice and not for lack of trying. There remains a vital international campaign calling on Dow to do the right thing. But Dow is a tough target with thick skin–they don’t care.

Why then, should organizers continue targeting Dow as a bad corporate actor if public shame does not work? Because there is simply no other mechanism of justice available. Big players like Dow, Bayer, Syngenta, DuPont, and Monsanto effectively operate above the law.

We have seen time and again that there is no national government willing to take on the “Big 6” pesticide manufacturers, who together dominate the agricultural input sector (i.e., pesticides and the seeds genetically engineered to go with them). Here in the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is getting cold feet about really pursuing a rigorous re-evaluation of Syngenta’s flagship herbicide atrazine, a ubiquitous drinking water contaminant that also happens to be an endocrine disruptor associated with birth defects, cancers, and more. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Department of Justice (DOJ) have mysteriously backed away from what looked like a promising investigation into the monopoly control enjoyed by the likes of Monsanto and DuPont over the agricultural input market. The list goes on.

The Original “Dirty Dozen” Campaign

In 1982, when the Pesticide Action Network (PAN) was founded, we faced a similar conundrum. No government agencies were willing to do anything about global pesticide trade and transport. Then it was dubbed the “Circle of Poison,” a phrase that captured the problem of pesticides illegal in the industrialized North being dumped or sold to countries in the South with lax regulations then making their way back up North as residues on food. Long-lasting, bioaccumulative pesticides like DDT were also making their way around the world on wind and water currents and by accumulating up the food chain to contaminate mother’s milk in arctic regions where these pesticides had never really been used.

There were, and are, dozens of these kinds of globe-trotting pesticides–called persistent organic pollutants, or POPs–but PAN chose to go after 12 of the most highly hazardous ones in order to bring some focus and public attention to a nexus of problems otherwise too complicated to tackle. In 1985 the global network launched the original “Dirty Dozen Campaign” (not to be confused with the Environmental Working Groups’s list that identifies fruits and vegetables with varying levels of pesticides). We worked with citizens around the world to track the use and effects of the target chemicals and to press for a ban of 12 pesticides nobody had heard of and few could pronounce. We did so before there any were global governance mechanisms to make this ban happen.

The road was long and arduous and it took the work of many hands. Sixteen years later, we had not one but two international treaties regulating pesticide trade and transport: the Rotterdam Convention on Prior Informed Consent (the “PIC treaty”) and the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (the “POPs treaty”). Not coincidentally, more than half of the POPs treaty’s first 12 target chemicals were pesticides on PANs “Dirty Dozen” list. “Circle of Poison” issues have largely been addressed and POPs are declining worldwide.

Sometimes you have to just name the problem and go after it. To wit: the 99 percent.

Toxic Trespassers on Trial

Twenty-seven years to the day after Bhopal, on the International Day of No Pesticides, PAN convened a trial to bring into focus the problem of pesticides today. We no longer have the “Circle of Poison” problem so much as a complete lack of corporate accountability. There is no system of justice or governance adequate to the task of taking on what has quietly become one of the most powerful industries on the planet.

Known as the “Big 6,” the indicted corporations include Monsanto, Dow, BASF, Bayer, Syngenta, and DuPont. Collectively, these interests control 75 percent of the global pesticide market and 49 percent of the global seed market, earning the pesticide/agricultural biotechnology industry the distinction of being among the most consolidated sectors in the world.[1]

From December 3-6, 2011, the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal will convene to hear cases brought by farmers, farmworkers, mothers, young people, scientists, and consumers from around the world. The Big 6 stand accused of violating human rights by promoting reliance on the sale and use of pesticides known to undermine internationally recognized rights to health, livelihood, and life.

The PPT is an international opinion tribunal, established as a successor to the Russell Tribunals on Vietnam (1966-1967) and on Latin American dictatorships (1974-1976), to make visible and juridically qualify situations of massive human rights abuses when those violations find no other recognition or redress. While drawing its authority from the people, the PPT proceeds from relevant international human rights laws, precedents, and documents such as the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. Following the rigors of a conventional court format, violations are documented and presented to a jury who then deliberates and passes judgment.

To what end? We don’t yet know.

In 1996, after the PPT on Industrial Hazards and Human Rights in Bhopal, 1992, the “Charter on Industrial Hazards and Human Rights” was adopted. In 1983, the Tribunal sent investigators into Nicaragua pursuing accusations of U.S. aggression and undue intervention there. One year later, the case was taken up by the International Court of Justice. Chains of causality in global events are often indirect and only assume a kind of order in retrospect.

What we do know is this: Six corporations stand accused of systematic violations of human rights to health, livelihood, and life. And while less recognized in the U.S. than elsewhere in the world, international citizens’ tribunals have a long history of mobilizing public opinion. Governments often, but do not always, follow.

In June, Pfizer announced it was ending arsenic-containing chicken feed which no one realized they were eating anyway, but its arsenic-containing Histostat, fed to turkeys, continues. Poultry growers use inorganic arsenic, a recognized carcinogen, for “growth promotion, feed efficiency and improved pigmentation,” says the FDA. Yum.

And in August, Cargill Value Added Meats, the nation’s third-largest turkey processor, recalled 36 million pounds of ground turkey because of a salmonella outbreak, linked to one death and 107 illnesses in 31 states. Even as it closed its Springdale, Arkansas plant, steam cleaned its machinery and added “two additional anti-bacterial washes” to its processing operations, 185,000 more pounds were recalled the next month from the same plant.

Since the mad cow and Chinese melamine scandals of the mid 2000′s, a lot more people think about the food their food ate than before. But fewer people think about the drugs their food ingested. Food animal drugs seldom rate Capitol Hill hearings which is just fine with Big Pharma animals divisions since if people knew the antibiotics, heavy metals, growth promotants, vaccines, anti-parasite drugs and feed additives used on the farm, they would lose their appetite. Besides, people aren’t Animal Pharma’s primary customers anyway and the long term safety of animals drugs isn’t an issue, since patients supposed to die.

One of the late Sen.Ted Kennedy’s last legislative fights was about the overuse of livestock antibiotics. “It seems scarcely believable that these precious medications could be fed by the ton to chickens and pigs,” he wrote in a bill called the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act of 2007 (PAMTA) which has yet to pass. “These precious drugs aren’t even used to treat sick animals. They are used to fatten pigs and speed the growth of chickens. The result of this rampant overuse is clear: meat contaminated with drug-resistant bacteria sits on supermarket shelves all over America,” said Kennedy.

Because antibiotics make animals use feed more efficiently so they eat less and control disease in confinement farming’s packed conditions at the same time, they are practically the fifth food group. On a turkey farm with five million hens, antibiotics would save almost 2,000 tons of feed a year, says an article in a poultry journal.

And when the FDA tried to ban cephalosporins in 2008, one type of antibiotic crucial for treating salmonella in children, it became apparent just what Kennedy was up against. Two months after the FDA announced a hearing about a cephalosporin “Order of Prohibition” in agriculture, the regulatory action had morphed into a “Hearing to Review the Advances In Animal Health Within The Livestock Industry” thanks to lobbyists from the egg, chicken, turkey, milk, pork and cattle industries.

“Order of Prohibition”… “Hearing to Review the Advances In Animal Health Within The Livestock Industry,” same idea, right?

At the House Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry hearings [PDF], the National Turkey Federation’s Michael Rybolt defended antibiotics as a cost savings to consumers. “The increased costs to raise turkeys without antibiotics is real,” he said. “Today at retail outlets here in the D.C. market, a conventionally raised turkey costs $1.29 per pound. A similar whole turkey that was produced without antibiotics costs $2.29 per pound. With the average consumer purchasing a 15 pound whole turkey, that would mean there would be $15 tacked on to their grocery bill.”

Conventionally grown turkeys are even a better deal when you consider the cost of antibiotics!

And, antibiotic-based turkey farming is downright green, said Rybolt, calling 227 acre turkey operations, “small family farms.” Without them, more land would be needed to grow crops and house the animals because of the “decrease in density.” And, with 175,550 more tons of feed needed, there would be “an increase in manure.”

When the FDA capitulated to industry and turned the cephalosporin prohibition into a salute to animal “advances,” former Kansas governor and former dairyman John Carlin, asked, “What changed in less than five months? Certainly the problem hasn’t gone away.”

This month, the FDA also rejected petitions to ban human antibiotics like penicillins, tetracyclines and sulfonamides in livestock filed by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Environmental Defense, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Public Health Association, Food Animal Concerns Trust (FACT), and the Union of Concerned scientists, some filed over 12 years ago. Why?  ”FDA cannot withdraw approval of a new animal drug until the legally-mandated process,” said an FDA spokesman. The process includes an “evidentiary hearing,” perhaps like the cephalosporin advances.

Of course germs in turkey and other meat, even antibiotic resistant germs, are neutralized by cooking–but drug residues are not. A report last year from the USDA’s inspector general accuses U.S. slaughterhouses of releasing products to the public with excessive drug levels in them and charges that, “The effects of these residues on human beings who consume such meat are a growing concern.”

Nor are the antibiotics just in the meat! Scientists at the University of Minnesotafound antibiotic residues in corn, green onions and cabbage after growing them on soil fertilized with livestock manure. The drugs siphoned right up from the soil in just six weeks.

A quick look at the Code of Federal Regulations for turkey drugs does not whet you appetite for Thanksgiving. There are several arsenic turkey drugs approved to provide an, “increased rate of weight gain and improved feed efficiency,” say the official guidelines. But they are also “dangerous for ducks, geese, and dogs,” and must be discontinued,  ”5 days before slaughtering animals for human consumption to allow elimination of the drug from edible tissues.” Whew.

Halofuginone, another drug given to turkeys to kill pathogens, “is toxic to fish and aquatic life” and “an irritant to eyes and skin,” says the Federal Code. “Avoid contact with skin, eyes, or clothing” and “Keep out of lakes, ponds, and streams.” Bon appetit.

Drug-based farming has cut the time to “grow” an animal almost in half while doubling the market size of the animal itself.  For example, chickens were once slaughtered at fourteen weeks, weighing two pounds and are now slaughtered at seven weeks, weighing four and six pounds.

But the Brave New food techniques come at a price because the animals’ organs can not always keep up with the metabolic frenzy. Birds “fed and managed in such a way that they are growing rapidly,” are at risk of sudden death from cardiac problems and aortic rupture, say poultry scientists.

Growth drugs in turkeys may also “result in leg weakness or paralysis,” says the Federal Code, a side effect that a turkey slaughterhouse worker reports firsthand. Many turkeys arrive at the House of Raeford, in Raeford, NC with legs broken or dislocated, he told me in an interview and, “When you try to remove them from their crates, their legs twist completely around, limp and offering no resistance.” The turkeys, “must have been in a lot of pain,” says the worker, but they don’t cry out. “In fact the only sound as you hang them, he says, is the “trucks being washed out to go back and get a new load.”

The undercover employee’s reports of the “live hanger” culture at the House of Raeford, in which workers pulled the heads and legs off turkeys when they were stuck in crates and worse, led to Denny’s suspending its business from Raeford, the nation’s seventh largest turkey producer. The slaughterhouse is also infamous for a chlorine spill that killed a worker in 2003, an ammonia spill that evacuated  two towns the next year and a murdered worker in 2006.

Still, the mother of all turkey drugs is the asthma-like drug ractopamine, marketed as the “Medicated Tom Turkey Feed” Topmax. Approved for turkeys only two years ago, figures for Topmax use in turkeys are not yet available but the same drug is now used in 45 percent of U.S. pigs and 30 percent of ration-fed cattle.

There are two reasons ractopamine has raised safety questions. One is that itslabel reads, “WARNING: The active ingredient in Topmax, ractopamine hydrochloride, is a beta-adrenergic agonist. Individuals with cardiovascular disease should exercise special caution to avoid exposure. Not for use in humans. Keep out of the reach of children. The Topmax 9 formulation (Type A Medicated Article) poses a low dust potential under usual conditions of handling and mixing. When mixing and handling Topmax, use protective clothing, impervious gloves, protective eye wear, and a NIOSH-approved dust mask. Operators should wash thoroughly with soap and water after handling. If accidental eye contact occurs, immediately rinse eyes thoroughly with water. If irritation persists, seek medical attention. The material safety data sheet contains more detailed occupational safety information. To report adverse effects, access medical information, or obtain additional product information, call 1-800-428-4441.”

The other reason is that ractopamine is not withdrawn at slaughter. In fact, it is begun as the animals near slaughter and started during turkeys’ last 14 days. It is actually pumping through their systems as they arrive on the killing floor.

Like antibiotics and arsenic, ractopamine is given to turkeys to make them grow faster. It is similar to clenbuterol, a performance enhancing sports drug that is banned in the US, for both humans and livestock, and elsewhere. But ractopamine is also banned in Europe, Taiwan and China, where 1,700 ractopamine “poisonings” were reported and ractopamine-produced pork was seized in 2007. (You have to worry when China calls a food unsafe.)

Ractopamine caused actual riots in Taiwan in 2007 when 3,500 Tawainese pig farmers, some carrying pigs, threw dung and rotten eggs at police and military soldiers over the rumor that a ractopamine ban would be lifted.  ”Get out, USA pork” and “We refuse to eat pork that contains poisonous ractopamine,” they chanted for hours according to Taiwan News.

Reports of ractopamine’s lack of safety are not hard to find.  In 2009, theEuropean Food Safety Authority (EFSA) termed ractopamine a cardiac stimulator. Ractopamine residues “represent a genuine risk to consumers,” wrote a medical  journal article, citing “long plasma half-lives, and relatively slow rates of elimination.” And a report from Ottawa’s Bureau of Veterinary Drugs says that rats fed ractopamine developed a constellation of birth defects like cleft palate, protruding tongue, short limbs, missing digits, open eyelids and enlarged heart.

The FDA is well aware of ractopamine’s downside. In 2003, three years after the drug was approved for use in U.S. pigs, the FDA accused its manufacturer, Elanco, of withholding information about ractopamine’s “safety and effectiveness” and “adverse animal drug experiences” in a fourteen-page warning letter.

Elanco, said the FDA, failed to report furious pig farmers phoning the company about “dying animals,” “downer pigs,” animals “down and shaking,” “hyperactivity” and “vomiting after eating feed with Paylean,” and also suppressed clinical trial information. But, thanks to same probable lobbying that reversed the cephalosporin ban, the FDA approved ractopamine for cattle the following year and for use in turkeys in 2009! Last year, the FDA enlarged the approval for cattle.

Turkey meat produced with ractopamine is not the same as normal meat byElanco’s own admission! “Alterations” in muscle were seen in turkeys fed ractopamine like an increase in “mononuclear cell infiltrate and myofiber degeneration,” says its 2008 new drug application documents. There was “an increase in the incidence of cysts,” and differences, some “significant,” in the weight of organs like hearts, kidneys and livers. (“Enlarged hearts” had been seen in test rats feed ractopamine in the Canadian studies.)

Still, ractopamine, like antibiotics, is being hailed as “green” and for lowering the carbon footprint. It has “positive environmental benefits for livestock producers in terms of decreased nitrogen and phosphorus excretions,” extols one journal article. It results in a, “reduced amount of total animal waste,” unless, of course, you count the manure coming from Big Pharma.

 Originally published on AlterNet

But if Thanksgiving is truly about offering gratitude for what we have, it seems fitting to also be grateful to the turkey that many of us will eat for dinner. We ought to think about how that turkey lived before ending up on our tables. With that in mind, let’s first take a look at the life of a turkey in an industrial farm.

Turkeys on factory farms are hatched in incubators mostly on large farms in the Midwest or the South. A few days after hatching, turkeys have their upper beaks snipped off. Once the beak is removed, the turkey can no longer pick and choose what it wants to eat. In their natural environment, turkeys are omnivores. But in a factory farm, turkeys are fed a steady diet of corn-based grain feed laced with antibiotics.

Industrially produced turkeys spend their first three weeks of life crammed into a brooder with hundreds of other birds. In the fourth week, turkey chicks are moved from the brooder to a giant window-less room with 10,000 other turkeys where bright lights shine 24 hours a day. With the lights constantly blaring, natural sleeping, eating, and fertility patterns are completely disrupted and the turkeys are, for the most part, kept awake and eating non-stop. Turkeys have an instinct to roost, or to clutch something when they sleep, but on the floor of a crowded room there is no such opportunity. If this is starting to sound like torture to you, you’re on the mark.

As a result of these unhealthy and crowded living conditions, farmers must feed the turkeys a constant supply of antibiotics. Pesticides are also widely used to inhibit the spread of disease. Antibiotics are also known to promote weight gain in farm animals and this connection is being made in humans now as well. In an effort to maximize the more profitable white breast meat, farmers have genetically selected and bred the white broad breasted turkey, which become so top heavy that they can no longer stand or reproduce and as a result, all industrial turkeys are created by artificial insemination. Turkeys are then brought to slaughter, often in a brutal way.

If that wasn’t enough to make you reconsider your Butterball, there’s more. Thanksgiving is also a time when we honor the abundance of the harvest represented by the bounty on our tables. But supporting a Big Turkey farm (or any factory farm) contributes to the devastation of our natural environment and imperils the safety of our food supply.

According to the USDA, factory-farmed animals in the U.S. produce 61 million tons of waste each year–130 times the volume of human waste. The Environmental Protection Agency reports that hog, chicken, and cattle waste has polluted 35,000 miles of rivers in 22 states and contaminated groundwater in 17 states. Polluted runoff from factory farms and other industrial farms is the biggest water pollution problem in the U.S., according to the EPA.

Human health is impacted in other ways by factory farming. Just this past August, Cargill announced a recall of 185,000 pounds of ground turkey due to Salmonella contamination. With recalls and food-borne illnesses on the rise as a result of conditions in factory farms, it seems wise to avoid these foods for that reason alone.

Factory farmed meat is also implicated in long-term health consequences. Resistance to antibiotics is now a growing concern among many in the medical field and it is largely due to the 29 million pounds administered to factory-raised animals every year. As it stands today, one out of six cases of Campylobacter infection, the most common cause of bacterial food poisoning, is resistant to the antibiotic most used to treat it. And nearly all strains of Staphylococcal infections have become resistant to penicillin, while many are developing resistance to newer drugs as well. Indeed, 80 percent of all antibiotics used in this country are used on factory-farmed animals according to an FDA report.

And finally, there is the nitty-gritty of nutritional value in these factory-farmed foods. Studies show that pastured-based meat and dairy are far more nutritious than their conventional counterparts. They are richer in antioxidants; including vitamins E, beta-carotene, and vitamin C and contain far more Omega-3 fatty acids. Turkeys that are raised on grass and allowed to roam around and practice normal turkey behavior are healthier, safer to eat, good for the environment, and get to live a happy life. Our best option is to eat high quality meat and a lot less of it.

So in the spirit of Thanksgiving, let’s be grateful to the turkey that we’re eating and opt out of supporting a system of abuse and environmental destruction. Eat a pasture-raised turkey or make a vegetarian alternative for this year’s Thanksgiving feast.

Eat Wild is a valuable resource for pasture-raised meat and animal products. Brooklyn Based also lists pasture-raised turkeys available for sale in New York City. Slow Food USA has information and resources for heritage breed turkeys. Meatless Monday offers 10 tips for cooking a meatless Thanksgiving.

A petition has been created by Occupy Big Food to tell Butterball—the number one producer of turkeys in America—that Americans are no longer going to purchase turkeys that are inhumanely treated, or support a factory-farm system that creates dire environmental and health consequences. Please go to Occupy Big Food for more information and sign the petition here.

In both the popular imagination and ad campaigns, honey is the epitome of a wild food. After all, bees can’t be herded and overfed like cattle, or immobilized like broiler chickens if they are to continue making the sweet substance. As reported here last year, bees are “a key to global food security” due to their critical importance in food chains worldwide. In fact, honey seems to be a bellwether of global food insecurities.

The “wild” nature of even cultivated honey is both one of its major selling points and the source of many of its problems. A Guardian article recently reported that a European Union court on September 6 ruled that honey containing traces of pollen from genetically modified (GM) corn must also be labeled as GM produce. The ruling comes as a result of beekeepers in Germany discovering traces of corn pollen from a nearby field of Monsanto corn crops. The nature of bee biology and honey production throw the current discourse surrounding globalization and its effect on the permeability of local and global boundaries in a more literal light. After all, bees can’t be herded according to national borders.

Honey and national security are an odd combination, but one of undeniable importance. Colony Collapse Disorder continues to plague hives, causing mass bee die-offs. Last year, although there were rumors that the root cause of the disorder had been found, it is still unclear how much pesticides play a role. As a result, over the last decade these bee die-offs and other environmental factors have increased the price of domestic honey and, as with so many other products, have opened the door to cheaper Chinese imports. This imported honey, however, is often tainted by antibiotics fed to the bees, heavy metals from storage containers, or adulterated with “filler” products such as barley malt and jaggery. The sale of Chinese honey in the United States has been made nearly impossible by staggeringly high tariffs.

A recent Food Safety News (FSN) investigation, however, discovered that “a third or more of all the honey consumed in the U.S. is likely to have been smuggled in from China.” Such a thing can occur because of a number of factors–the cheaper price of Chinese honey and the lack of a legal definition of “honey” among them. Chinese manufacturers pass honey through countries such as Russia, India and Australia in order to disguise the honey’s true country of origin.

One company, True Source Honey, LLC, has taken steps to halting this process. Formed by representatives from four North American honey marketing companies and importers, Golden Heritage Foods, LLC, Burleson’s Inc., Odem International, and Dutch Gold Honey, the company works to accredit honey sources and thereby build a base of trustworthy companies. The pledge signed by accredited companies includes these three tenets, honey must be:

• Ethically sourced in a transparent and traceable manner from known beekeepers and brokers;
• Moved through the supply chain in full accordance with U.S. law and without circumvention of trade duties; and
• Carry truthful labeling as to its source, has been tested to ensure quality, and has been handled in a safe and secure manner from hive to table

However, zero North American packers, five importers, and four beekeeping companies have passed the accreditation process and are now “True Source Certified.” Of course, the American founders of True Source Honey have a vested interest in keeping cheap international competition controlled. Yet I think, in looking at True Source Honey’s web site, what is most surprising is not the comparatively few companies that have gone through its accreditation process, but rather the hundreds of news stories on the site about the company’s milestones, busts of honey launderers, meetings of big players in the honey industry about the issue.

Just this week, FSN reported that more than three-fourths of the honey sold in U.S. grocery stores isn’t exactly what the bees produce, according to testing done exclusively for FSN. FSN reports: “The results show that the pollen frequently has been filtered out of products labeled ‘honey.’ The removal of these microscopic particles from deep within a flower would make the nectar flunk the quality standards set by most of the world’s food safety agencies.”

In a culture plagued by food industry horror stories and bad news, why hasn’t the problem of honey laundering made more of an impact on national media outlets over the course of the past ten years?  Why have they been, with a few exceptions, relegated to local news pieces replete with honey jokes, such as one CityPages blog post that states, “Minnesota beekeepers are so buzzing mad about ‘honey laundering’ that they’re holding a press conference about it today at the State Fair.”

Perhaps one of the reasons honey laundering hasn’t received more national attention is because the problem sheds unwelcome light on so many of the problems faced by current national food security. Honey reveals how something so simple as a name (what one can legally call “honey”) unites issues of international relations, economics at both the global and domestic levels, and biology (how honey is naturally made, and what can be done to bees in order to produce more of it).

Worth considering is the fact that the U.S. often views China as an economic and social threat–while the U.S. is in the process of forging a new, deeper alliance with India. Chinese honey cannot be imported into the U.S., for example, while Indian honey still is (in fact, according to the earlier FSN report, nearly all of honey imported to the U.S. comes from India). Yet Indian honey has already been outlawed in the E.U. because of its equally high level of antibiotics.

Perhaps, as with so many other foods, people must get sick before good health takes precedence over business as usual. The honey laundering issue is not, as some have claimed, just an overreaction to competitive global market practices. It is a case study that, were the world to truly focus on it, would cause us to reconsider many aspects of how global food industries work.

Photo: LauraZimmerman