Livestock

The U.S.-raised animals we eat consumed about 29 million pounds of antibiotics in the last year alone, according to a first-ever Food and Drug Administration accounting of antimicrobial drug use by the American livestock industry. The release of the figures -- in a little-noticed posting on the FDA's website Friday -- came in response to a 2008 law requiring the federal government to collect and disseminate antibiotic use in livestock as part of the Animal Drug User Fee Act . The Union of Concerned Scientists, which authored a 2001 report that was highly critical of the routine practice of feeding antibiotics to livestock, estimated the yearly animal consumption of antibiotics to be eight times as large as the volume of antibiotics produced for human consumption in the U.S. Mardi Mellon, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' Food and Environment program, said the new report corroborates the 2001 findings of the group's report, titled "Hogging It.

A California Assembly bill that would require anyone who videotapes, photographs or records incidents of animal cruelty to turn over the evidence to authorities within 48 hours - or be charged with an infraction of the law - sounds like a tough new measure to crack down on abuse. It's not. In reality, it's one of a crop of disturbing "ag-gag" bills being introduced across the country. Although AB 343 is not as bad as some others that ban outright recording and videotaping at animal facilities, it would effectively hamper animal welfare undercover investigators and employee whistle-blowers who are collecting information on systemic animal cruelty at meatpacking plants, slaughterhouses, livestock ranches and farms.

Your article "Drug-Free Food" (July 14) suggests that a ban on all antibiotics in animals would place livestock in danger from diseases. However, what truly puts livestock in danger from disease in large industrial farms -- where antibiotics are routinely used -- is the fact that hundreds and thousands of animals are cramped together, using as little space as possible, with little or no access to sunlight, fresh air or natural movement. It is in these conditions, where animals eat and sleep in their own waste, living in a virtual breeding ground for disease, that antibiotics must be used to prevent inevitable outbreaks of illness.

Describing the routine use of antibiotics in meat and poultry production as a "serious threat to public health," the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2010 called on livestock operations to voluntarily reduce their reliance on the medications. But an FDA report this month indicates that, so far, the results are unimpressive: Antibiotic sales to livestock operations rose in 2011, rather than falling. It is unclear why the numbers went up - perhaps there were simply more animals - and in fact, new legislation seeks to require better information on this score.

Though it may not be rustling in the way we normally think it, livestock theft is not an activity unknown in urbanized Orange County. In 1989 (the most recent complete year for which information is available) the value of stolen animals doubled from the previous year, reaching almost $20,000. That was much lower, however, than in 1987, when the five-year trend hit a high point.

Led by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, 37 health and consumer groups petitioned the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to ban the use of seven antibiotics in livestock, saying the practice poses a potential threat to human health. The drugs the groups want banned are penicillin, tetracycline, erythromycin, tylosin, lincomycin, virginiamycin and bacitracin.

Livestock and meat futures moved higher Wednesday, with the pork complex registering sharp gains on a strong cash market. On other markets, lumber futures were sharply higher; most grain, soybean, livestock and meat futures advanced; and energy futures were lower, with some heating oil and gasoline contracts down sharply.

Every January, amid the martini bars and gastropubs that line this ambitious city's downtown, a procession of long-horned cattle and cowboys weaves through the streets of Denver. The parade is the climax of the National Western Stock Show, which has been an annual staple of mile-high winters for 105 years. During 16 days in an arena three miles northeast of Denver's high-rises, luxury condos and spiffy new art museum, ranchers and breeders from throughout the West show off their wares to hundreds of thousands of spectators.

A Busch Gardens theme park in Williamsburg is asking tourists who recently visited European or South American countries affected by foot-and-mouth disease not to visit the park's petting zoo. "Guests who are visiting the petting zoo most likely are animal lovers, and we hope they will embrace this policy," park spokeswoman Cindy Sarko said. Busch Gardens introduced a similar policy this week at its popular safari-themed park in Tampa, Fla.

Workers began slaughtering thousands of British pigs, sheep and cattle Saturday, as the government said its measures to contain an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease appeared to be paying off. The animals were being killed on six farms where the disease had been confirmed and at two others that had contact with the infected sites, chief veterinary officer Jim Scudamore said. The carcasses were to be burned to keep the risk of transmission to a minimum.

BEIJING - China's coldest winter in nearly three decades sent vegetable prices soaring and drove inflation to a seven-month high in December. Consumer prices rose 2.5% from December a year earlier, China's National Bureau of Statistics said Friday, up from 2% year-over-year growth in November. A key reason for concern is that rising inflation could restrict China's ability to stimulate growth if its tepid recovery loses momentum. Higher food prices also worry the Chinese government because discontent rises when poorer people have to pay a bigger share of their income on food.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, in a bid to help drought-stricken farmers, announced it would buy up to $170 million worth of meat from affected livestock producers. The prolonged Midwest drought has driven up feed costs for livestock farmers in affected areas, and the purchase of pork, lamb, chicken and catfish will provide some relief, the USDA said in a statement. Many farmers had been selling livestock as they struggled to feed their herds and flocks, creating a temporary surplus of meat and lowering prices.

In its latest move to provide relief to drought-stricken farmers, the U.S. Department of Agriculture  announced Monday that it would buy up to $170 million of meat from affected livestock producers.  The prolonged Midwest drought has driven up feed costs for livestock farmers in affected areas, and the purchase of pork, lamb, chicken and catfish will provide some relief, the USDA said in a statement. The purchases will assist "producers who are currently struggling due to the challenging market conditions and the high cost of feed resulting from the widespread drought," Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsak said in a statement.

Dinosaurs' gassy guts may have contributed to global warming tens of millions of years ago, according to a new study that finds a group of plant-eating dinosaurs could have produced about as much methane as all of today's natural and man-made sources of the greenhouse gas. British researchers reported in Tuesday's edition of the journal Current Biology that the methane emissions from sauropods far outstripped those of today's cattle, goats and...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Wednesday that it will ask livestock producers, drug companies and veterinarians to curb the use of antibiotics to promote growth in food-producing animals - a widespread practice that has been shown to create drug resistance in microbes.  The presence of such “superbugs,” as they're sometimes called, threatens public health because if they sicken humans, they can be impossible to treat....

Joining my 9-year-old daughter and a sizable slice of the American population, I queued up last week to watch"The Hunger Games. "My daughter had just read the book and was giddy with excitement. Reviewers had reassured me that scenes in the film showing children fighting each other to the death on orders of a totalitarian state had been carefully edited. Still, the movie turned my stomach - and not because of what I saw on the screen. What flashed through my mind were images of North Korea.

Nations from Australia to Latvia slapped bans on European Union meat and livestock Wednesday, restrictions aimed at preventing the spread of a virulent disease that has cropped up among farm animals in France and Britain. Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Norway were the latest countries to announce bans on imports of livestock and meat products from the 15-nation EU after foot-and-mouth disease was found Tuesday among cattle in northwestern France.

The Netherlands confirmed its first cases of the foot-and-mouth disease that has devastated cattle herds in Britain. The agriculture minister's announcement that four contaminated cows had been detected, and the near certainty that hundreds of goats had been infected, quashed hopes that the livestock disease could be bottled up in a small corner of France, the only other place in continental Europe where it has been identified.

The Food and Drug Administration must address the use of antibiotics in livestock, a federal judge in New York has ruled in a lawsuit, a signal that the FDA may soon ban the practice due to longstanding public health concerns. The ruling favors a coalition of plaintiffs including the Natural Resources Defense Council, which filed suit last May in a bid to push the FDA to exert more control over agricultural use of penicillin and tetracycline, two popular antibiotics used in feed to protect chickens, pigs and cattle from disease and speed their growth.