I told my students about Abby in my food and drug law class last night.

http://www.change.org/actions/view/farm_factories_abusing_antibiotics_spread_mrsa_vre_to_communities_via_raw_meat

http://www.change.org/actions/view/farm_factories_abusing_antibiotics_spread_mrsa_vre_to_communities_via_raw_meat

Time to throw all the industry lobbists out of congressional offices, stop the revolving door, and hold elected representatives accountable.

Our food supply needs proper regulation which includes stiff jail time and heavy fines for the CEO's who allow such horrors to occur.

All that "change we can believe in" looks like "business as usual" to me.

Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) Strain ST398 Is Present in Midwestern U.S. Swine and Swine Workers

snip...

Conclusions These results show that colonization of swine by MRSA was very common on one swine production system in the midwestern U.S., suggesting that agricultural animals could become an important reservoir for this bacterium. MRSA strain ST398 was the only strain documented on this farm. Further studies are examining carriage rates on additional farms.

http://staphmrsa.blogspot.com/2009/01/methicillin-resistant-staphylococcus.html

also see ;

snip...

We found that ST398 is rare among Dutch MSSA strains colonizing healthy persons (2 [0.2%] of 829 strains). However, a relatively high number of MSSA isolates homologous to the ST398 MRSA were derived from bacteremic patients (3 [2.1%] of 146; p = 0.026). These 3 bacteremia isolates were not related epidemiologically; they were isolated from different patients in different medical departments over an extended period. This finding suggests that these MSSA strains are quite virulent. The strict segregation of ST398 strains (Figure 1, panel A; Figure 2) corroborates that the strains belong to a separate biotype associated with pigs (15).

Our findings pose a warning to public health surveillance: if the ST398 MSSA virulence toward humans would be maintained within the ST398 MRSA lineage from pigs, care should be taken not to introduce this strain into humans. We consider it to be likely that ST398 MRSA from pigs is capable of causing serious infection in humans even though its primary host seems to be pigs.

Dr van Belkum is with the Department of Medical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, University Medical Center Rotterdam, Rotterdam, the Netherlands. His research interests include MRSA.

References

snip...full text ;

http://www.cdc.gov/eid/content/14/3/479.htm

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)

http://staphmrsa.blogspot.com/2008/03/iceid-2008-methicillin-resistant.html

MRSA

http://staphmrsa.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Establishing a Fully Integrated National Food Safety System with Strengthened Inspection, Laboratory and Response Capacity Draft 09/24/09


http://fdafailedus.blogspot.com/2010/01/establishing-fully-integrated-national.html

TSS