MRSA in the food chain - another gift from the intensive farming industry?
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.
tags: antibiotics, chickens, cows, DEFRA, food, FSA, intensive farming, meat, MRSA, pigs2008: the year much of humanity began to go hungry
Isn’t it, truly and honestly, time that the world stopped eating meat—or, at the very least, individuals and families in the West, cut back to one meat-based meal per week? If Westerners had most meat all to themselves, like so many things, the food crisis might not have grown as rapidly as it has.
But diets are changing in countries such as China, India, Brazil and Russia, where economic growth has boosted meat consumption—in China, the world’s biggest nation, the rate is up 150 per cent since 1980. In India, it has risen 40 per cent in the last fifteen years. Demand for meat from across all developing countries has doubled since 1980. Now it seems the hunger for meat in preference to vegetables, rice and other staples will, in 2008 and beyond, be the death of many millions.
tags: animals, chickens, cows, environment, famine, food, food crisis, health, meat, pigs, planetary resources, self-sufficiency, selfishness, sheep, starvation
