Bugs + Drugs

The Chicken Mafia learned a long time ago that they can make more money by feeding antibiotics to their factory flocks.  When you have 250,000 birds crammed through a chicken factory, the sniffles in one bird soon becomes a pandemic that ruins your profitability.

I previously Blogged about the smorgasbord of drugs fed to chickens so that the Chicken Mafia earn maximum profits. Here's an update.

A June 2011 Surveillance Bulletin from Public Health Canada warns of apparent cheating by the Chicken Mafia who are suspected of using ciprofloxin antibiotics in chicken.  PHC found a rising prevalence of ciprofloxin-resistant campylobacter in retail chicken sold in BC and Saskatchewan.  Campylobacter is the most common foodborne pathogen that causes gastroenteritis in Canadians.  Ciprofloxacin is a fluoroquinolone antimicrobial, which is considered very important to human medicine in the treatment of respiratory, urinary, gastrointestinal, skin and bone/joint infections.  These antimicrobials are not labelled for use in poultry in Canada. Health Canada requires that veterinary fluoroquinolone product labels include the following warnings:

• Do not use in an extra-label manner in cattle or in any other species; 

• To limit the potential development of antimicrobial resistance: Fluoroquinolone drugs such as Baytril 100/A180, should not be used indiscriminately.

  This Chicken Mafia cheating was discovered by the Canadian Integrated Program for Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance (CIPARS).  Public Health Canada says that:

"Expert opinion suggests that the trend noted in ciprofloxacin-resistant Campylobacter from chicken is associated with the extra-label use of enrofloxacin in broiler breeder flocks to treat Salmonella."

It is common industry practice for the Chicken Mafia to request that antibiotics be added to the chicken feed and/or the water supply for the birds.  Continuous dosing of low levels of antibiotics helps protect your Chicken Mafia profits, but has been shown to increase the risk of drug resistant bacteria developing.

But that is just a small miniscule risk, right?  Surely the government wouldn't let the Chicken Mafia create a Frankenstein monster in the hen house, right?  Don't be so sure.

CBC TV has a popular show called Marketplace who investigated this situation back in 2011. Two-thirds of the chicken was contaminated with bacteria, but all of the contaminated samples had at least one strain of bacteria that was found to be drug-resistant.

That means humans are surrounded by a growing mob of drug-resistant bacteria.  When we get sick, more and more of the bugs that make us sick cannot be treated by antibiotics.  The magic bullet can't be used.

A Feb 2011 Care2 article writes to over 367,000 people who have expressed an interest in "Real Food".  After reading the article, 491 people (as of 2013/08/27) expressed their opinion that 77% of them were less likely to buy antibiotic induced meats from a grocery store.  Combining the survey categories of  "leaning yes" and "yes", we have a total of 89% who were less likely to buy.

Another study in 2009 found that 80% of all kg. of antibiotics sold in the US goes to treat livestock and poultry.  Should we assume this is similar to Canada?

Of course, only a small fraction of people go to the Care2 website, so these conspiracy theory, aluminum foil hat crowd can be dismissed as "crackpots", at least that is likely how the Chicken Mafia see it.

Unfortunately, the Chicken Mafia isn't worried about these findings.

The Mafia Don (a.k.a. Chicken Farmers of Canada) isn't talking about this anymore.  If you go to CFC's website and do a search for "antibiotics" I got three hits to the search on 2013/08/27; two of which refer to files that have been removed from CFC's website.  Fortunately, CFC forgot to update their search index file, so we know what has been removed by them.  CFC isn't worried, they decided to stonewall and deny.  I wonder why?

Search results for "antibiotics" on CFC's website as of
13/08/27 11:50 AM EDT shows 3 hits, the first two have disappeared
and are no longer available for the public.  Why?

 The third hit for "antibiotics" directs us to CFC's Mission and Vision, where we find:

Our Vision

A Canadian chicken industry that satisfies consumer expectations with domestically produced chicken.
The central elements of this vision include:
...   [Other items deleted for our focus on antibiotics]

• Innovative products and management practices that respond to a broader array of consumer expectations – for different market segments (most notably aging baby boomers and immigrant/ethnic populations); and for product quality, animal care, environment and antibiotics use.

So it appears that CFC realizes that the public has some expectations concerning antibiotics.  Whatever CFC thinks those expectations concerning "antibiotics", they don't want to say, for specifics are messy, and could get CFC in trouble with their members in the Chicken Mafia.

Will this limited awareness by CFC save us all from the "Bugs vs. Drugs" war?  Don't hold your breath.  If CFC was doing anything, or if they had accomplished anything, they would have blared the news far and wide.

There's nothing to see.  Move along.  Go back to sleep.  All is well.  Trust us.

Meat Regs: More at stake than meat

Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food ("OMAF") is reviewing their Meat Regulations.  When they held public information meetings on their proposed changes, I attended the Sudbury meeting.  See my previous report after their public information meeting.

I finally finished it and filed Small Flocker's recommendations and comments with OMAF. Small Flocker's comments and recommended improvements on Ontario's current Meat Regulations are available here

Some of the issues I raised are as follows:

Food Borne Illness Outbreaks
Food borne illness in the US is estimated at $77.7 Billion per year.  We might therefore estimate Canada's impact at $7.77 Billion per year, 10% of US total.  Similarly based on US results from CDC, Canadian food borne illness outbreaks (ie. many individuals over a large area affected) from meats and poultry (ie. excludes fish & seafood) probably account for 22% (n=210,000) of the outbreaks, 22% (n= 572) of the resulting hospitalizations, and 29% (n=18) of the deaths.

Sporadic Food Poisoning
Add to the outbreaks described above are the sporadic food borne illnesses (1 or a few people, closely contained). More than 9 million persons each year in the USA have a food borne illness caused by a major pathogen, so Canada probably has 900,000 sporadic illnesses per year.

Poor Diet due to high cost of Meat
There is growing understanding by food nutrition experts  that excess dietary carbohydrates are causing or contributing to significant incidence and prevalence of multiple diseases such as obesity, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, arthritis, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, cancer, etc.  See Dr. Lustig here and here, Gary Taubes here, and Dr. Jay Wortman here and CBC Television Documentary here

Health care is more than 40% of Ontario’s Provincial budget, and these dietary influenced diseases are directly and indirectly related to most of these health care costs, possibly up to 70% of these direct and indirect health care costs (ie. 70% of 40%, or a grand total of 28% of Ontario’s budget caused by poor diet).  Ontario’s 2013-2014 budget for healthcare is $48.9 Billion per year.  This total diet-related tax burden is suggested as 70% of this total annual budget, representing $34.23 Billion per year, a significant cost to Ontario.  The cost of food borne illness can be added as well, further raising the stakes.

I suggest that this $34.23+ Billion health care cost trumps the total value-added GDP of $8 Billion per year that is created by Ontario’s meat industry.

If meat protein and the accompanying animal fat is more affordable and available, this can help reduce these food-induced risks and disease burden for Ontario.

When considering the Meat Regulation amendments and these specific recommendation, it is suggested that this indirect cost to Ontario of $34.23 Billion per year be kept in mind.

Meat Export Opportunities
I previously posted about the appalling, weak-kneed meat export business Canada has for chicken.  In 2012, CFC reported that Canada produced 1.0247 Billion kg of chicken, at a price of $1.80/kg or higher.  We calculate a total value of $1.844 Billion.  If OECD exports can allow us to increase our production 5 times 2012 levels, that's an additional $7.378 Billion in GDP for Canada.  Ontario's share would be about 1/3 of this, or $2.46 Billion.  Assuming a 3:1 spin-off effect, that is a total of $7.378 Billion of additional business for Ontario.

Grand Total

When we add up all the above, we get a grand total in excess of $41.61 Billion per year that is directly affected by this Meat Regulation revision process.  I hope OMAF gives it the attention it deserves.

There is more at stake than just meat.