I’ve had a lot of people send me this article. It is an example of how Big Ag twists things to protect themselves…
Study questions safety of meat from animals raised without antibiotics
The meat from hogs raised in a free range fashion and without antibiotics carries more pathogens and parasites than the meat from hogs fed low levels of antibiotics and raised in a conventional fashion, according to research conducted at The Ohio State University and published in Foodborne Pathogens and Disease.
-Iowa Farm Bureau
Bogus.
The study was funded by Big Ag.
They want you to believe you need confinement animal feeding operations and antibiotics to grow healthy food. They have a vested interest.
This is not a real threat. So why are they bringing it up and making such a big deal out of nothing? Because Big Ag is scared.
They are desperate to justify their existence. Certified Organic and Certified Naturally Grown are denting their profits.
They fear the tiny percentage of farms raising pigs naturally outdoors.
The reality is that the pathogens they spout off about are all killed by proper processing and cooking which is the norm, recommended and required.
What they fail to mention that Big AG CAFOs factory farm indoor pigs are creating new more powerful super bugs that are resistant to the antibiotics - MSRA or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.
the Center for Disease Control reported 94,360 “invasive MRSA infections” in the United States in 2005 — of which 18,650 resulted in death. More people now die of MRSA than of AIDs.
:
Recently, though, a researcher at the University of Iowa decided to do what U.S. authorities have avoided: test U.S. CAFO-grown pigs for MRSA. Evidently, it wasn’t t that hard. Schneider reports that assistant professor of epidemiology Tara Smith and her team of graduate students merely “swabbed the noses of 209 pigs from 10 farms in Iowa and Illinois.”The results were unsettling: they “found MRSA in 70 percent of the porkers.” Stunningly, this apparently marked the first-ever publicly released test of U.S. hogs for MRSA.
-Grist
The reason that the Big Ag organizations are trying to show that outdoor pigs have bacteria on them is that the reality is the confined pigs have far worse. They are attempting a slight of hand, a distraction.
For more reading see this search.
In other words, the study funded by Big Ag and cited by the Iowa Farm Bureau is a desperate hoax to justify their existence by pointing fingers. Don’t be fooled by Big Ag’s PR and spin.
it should be noted that the researchers found antibodies and not disease. this mearly means that the pigs had good strong healthy immune systems and had fought off the illness and gee all without antibiotics. so the pastured pigs are healtheir than their confined antibiotic doesed brethren
Comment Anna — July 1, 2008 @ 9:30 am