MRSA in the food chain - another gift from the intensive farming industry?

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

Not long after it was revealed that Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) want to start feeding pig remains to our poultry, comes the news that a variant of MRSA may have entered the human food chain. It’s both ironic and tragic that the ST398 strain is found in factory-farmed pigs in the Netherlands. None of the three humans in three separate UK hospitals had a close association with farm animals.

Most cases of the ST398 strain have been spread to people in close contact with animals such as farmers, vets and abattoir workers. Those who handle and prepare food can be infected if the bacteria gets onto their hands and enters a cut or wound, even microscopic tears in the skin.

MRSA has been found in pigs in the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium and Germany and in other farm animals such as chickens and cattle. The Independent newspaper article, linked to above, fails to make clear whether the infected among these other species are factory-farmed as well, but it isn’t an unreasonable assumption to make, given the historical evidence which is indisputable by all but politicians and corporate agricultural concerns: namely, that intensive farming is synonymous with the encouragement and spread of dangerous diseases, as well as the increasing ineffectiveness of antibiotics in humans as well as animals through systemic overuse.

The ST398 strain has caused skin infections and rare heart and bone problems in humans, and is thought to have been spread among pigs that were fed antibiotics to increase their growth rate and—another irony—protect them from disease.

A survey by Dutch authorities in 2006 found traces of the bug in 20 per cent of pork products, 21 per cent of chicken meat and 3 per cent of beef. No cases have yet been found in UK animals, but the Soil Association has called for the testing of meat because two-thirds of Britain’s pork is imported from Holland. Without tests, the public and farmers remain ignorant of whether the bug is present or not. The Soil Association also wants the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) to publish interim results of its testing for MRSA in pigs, and suspects it has already been found. But DEFRA’s results remain under lock and key for the time being.

The government’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) says it does ‘not see serious food safety issues’. So you can all breathe easy, and tuck in. Assuming you eat meat, of course (which I don’t).

categories: animals, healthy planet