SRoach’s Recent Comments

• Click here to view comment in original post

  Did you even click the link in the post? The Arkansas town is Batesville and the hatchery is a Pilgrim's Pride hatchery. As it is unlikely that there is more than 1 Pilgrims Pride hatchery in Batesville the exact location was given.

   

  Yes MRSA has traditionally been a problem in hospitals. More recently it has begun to cause illness in people in the general community. The link to animals is even newer but is well established. There is no doubt that livestock handlers and veterinarians are a high risk group for MRSA. Here is a link to a USDA FACT sheet that lays out the evidence. http://www.aphis.usda.gov/vs/ceah/cei/taf/emergingdiseasenotice_files/mrsa_122007.pdf

  It is a bit dated, December 2007, so does not include the study on US pigs.

   

  On As MRSA gets worse, the FDA discovers antibiotic abuse on factory farms [UPDATED] posted 4 months, 1 week ago 7 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  While the FDA announced a ban on the feeding of poultry litter in 2004 they backed away from it very quickly and never published a rule that would have put it in place. If you look at the final rule passed last year it makes clear that poultry litter feeding is allowed in the US. http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2008/pdf/08-1180.pdf

  In 2005, when the FDA proposed the rule they estimated that between 20% and 36% of litter was fed to cattle as part of the cost analysis of a ban on litter. In 2006, when the Harvard Center for Risk assessment added poultry litter feeding to its risk assessment model on BSE they suggested that 1% was the correct figure. So for the FDA when calculating the cost of a ban use 36% of litter but when assessing the risk use 1%. This type of behaviour does not inspire much trust.

   

  On Symptom: swine flu. Diagnosis: industrial agriculture? posted 7 months ago 27 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  The Smithfield statement may be misleading in another way. If the pigs had the flu in February as suggested in the article you would no longer expect there to be clinical signs. The disease would have passed through the herd in a few weeks. You could probably detect antibodies to the flu virus which would at least let you know whether it was there.

  Here is a link to an article on swine flu in a pig breeding herd. http://www.aasv.org/shap/issues/v12n2/v12n2p78.pdf. In that case the herd showed signs for only a few weeks.

   

  On Symptom: swine flu. Diagnosis: industrial agriculture? posted 7 months ago 27 Responses