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April 5th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda THURSDAY, April 5 (HealthDay News) — There’s evidence that a
class of antibiotics banned for use in poultry in 2005 is still being used
in U.S. poultry production, a new study says.
These antibiotics — called fluoroquinolones — are used to treat
serious bacterial infections in people, particularly infections that are
resistant to older classes of antibiotics.
A primary reason for the 2005 U.S. Food and Drug Administration ban on
the use of fluoroquinolones in poultry was the increasing rate of
fluoroquinolone resistance in Campylobacter bacteria.
In this study, researchers analyzed feather meal, a poultry production
byproduct that is made from poultry feathers and is a common additive to
chicken, swine, cattle and fish feed.
The researchers said they were surprised to find fluoroquinolones in
eight of 12 samples of feather meal from different states. The presence of
fluoroquinolones in the feather meal suggests that the poultry received
the antibiotics before they were slaughtered, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg
School of Public Health and Arizona State University researchers
explained.
The study was recently published in the journal Environmental
Science Technology.
Fluoroquinolones are a class of antibiotics that includes
ciprofloxacin (Cipro, Proquin), enoxacin (Penetrex) and levofloxacin
(Levaquin), among others.
“The discovery of certain antibiotics in feather meal strongly suggests
the continued use of these drugs, despite the ban put in place in 2005 by
the FDA,” lead author David Love said in a Hopkins news release.
“The public health community has long been frustrated with the
unwillingness of FDA to effectively address what antibiotics are fed to
food animals,” he added.
Study co-author Keeve Nachman, director of the Farming for the Future
Program at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, said the rate of
fluoroquinolone resistance should have dropped since the ban.
“With such a ban, you would expect a decline in resistance to these
drugs,” Nachman noted. “The continued use of fluoroquinolones and
unintended antibiotic contamination of poultry feed may help explain why
high rates of fluoroquinolone-resistant Campylobacter continue to
be found on commercial poultry meat products over half a decade after the
ban.”
A group representing the chicken industry disagreed with the
report.
In a statement released Thursday, the National Chicken Council said,
“Antibiotics are used sparingly in chicken production; and only those that
are approved for use by the FDA. A majority of the antibiotics used to
treat and prevent disease in chickens are not used in human medicine,
meaning the threat of creating resistance in humans is essentially reduced
to zero.”
The group added that they “and many in the medical, veterinary and
agricultural fields, question any substantive link or scientific basis
between veterinary use of antibiotics and resistance in humans.”
But Nachman believes the findings show a need for tighter
regulation.
“We strongly believe that the FDA should monitor what drugs are going
into animal feed,” Nachman said. “Based on what we’ve learned, I’m
concerned that the new FDA guidance documents, which call for voluntary
action from industry, will be ineffectual. By looking into feather meal,
and uncovering a drug banned nearly six years ago, we have very little
confidence that the food animal production industry can be left to
regulate itself.”
When antibiotics are introduced into the feed and water of industrially
raised poultry in the United States, the purpose is to spur growth, not
treat disease, experts said.
More information
The Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics has more about antibiotic resistance.
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