Inside D.C.
What Did the Food Industry Ever Do to Rep. Slaughter?
Commentary
One of the smartest and toughest members of the House has in recent weeks decided the food industry must be punished, and I’m at loss to understand why. Rep. Louise Slaughter (D, NY), who represents Rochester and Buffalo and is a member of the Northeast Agriculture Caucus, is on the warpath, having introduced a bill to ban the use of low-level antibiotics on farms, while sponsoring a Capitol Hill screening of a controversial “documentary” on the evils of global agribusiness.
Ms. Slaughter, who chairs the powerful House Rules Committee, has succumbed to the pseudo-science of the Union of Concerned Scientists who claim on-farm antibiotic use is somehow the primary source of all antimicrobial resistance in humans. Here’s a mini-lesson in microbiology: Microbes mutate – it’s one of the things they do naturally, and they do it really well. While a particular antimicrobial may work the first few times it’s used to treat a bacterial condition, overuse of that drug can cause the little woofers to adjust and change so that, over time, your antimicrobial of choice doesn’t work as well – or may not work at all.
Critics contend “overuse” on farms is the root cause of this resistance in humans. Never mind there is no smoking-gun study to prove that claim. These critics are generally activist groups or “political” scientists who have little understanding of how the drugs are used to prevent and treat disease or to promote growth. They never talk about over-prescription in human medicine or hospitals as a primary source of resistant infections. They never talk about Denmark, which banned the products for growth promotion and now have swine diseases not seen in 20 years, greater therapeutic use to treat those diseases, and no positive effect on human resistance. Nope, for the critics the problem is the farmer. The Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production feels so strongly it bought thousands of dollars – tax-exempt dollars, I might add – to buy advertising space throughout the Washington, DC, subway system, declaring: “Animals are ‘hogging’ our antibiotics.” Nothing like a good scare campaign to make facts unnecessary.
Ms. Slaughter, who received her MS in microbiology in 1953, introduced a bill to ban the products on-farm, and in some cases, ending the use of these products to treat sick animals. I’m not even getting into the animal welfare implications of that one. Rep. Jean Schakowsky (D, IL), another non-scientist in the House, tried to use the Slaughter bill to amend the pending food safety package being debated in the House Energy & Commerce Committee; she was told by her chair, Rep. Henry Waxman (D, CA) who’s seeking a bipartisan bill that will sail to approval, that the issue was too controversial and unresolved to be included.
Ever ardent in pursuit of her agenda, Ms. Slaughter decided to take the matter back into her own hands and has set a hearing for July 13 – in the Rules Committee, which by the way has no legislative authority or function – to hear critic after critic of on-farm antibiotic use, apparently seeking to create some kind of hearing record to use as leverage to get her bill attached to the health care reform package being cobbled together as I type this. So odd is a legislative hearing in Rules, that the GOP members of the panel protested. When their complaints fell on deaf ears, they announced they will not participate in the hearing.
The experts who will testify at the heavily one-sided hearing range from Rep. Schakowsky to the Union of Concerned Scientists to the Pew Commission to the chairman and CEO of Chipolte Mexican Grill (which advertises its aversion to anything but “natural” foods) to the president and CEO of Bon Appetit Management Company. The lone witness for the aggies? Right now, it’s Rep. Leonard Boswell (D, IA), who as chair of the livestock subcommittee in House Ag, held a scientific hearing a year ago on the same issue. To get him on the panel took a formal request from House Ag Chair Collin Peterson (D, MN), who also formally requested the entire transcript of Boswell’s hearing be made part of the record of Ms. Slaughter’s event. She can’t be happy.
And, from the aggie/food industry point of view, to add insult to injury Ms. Slaughter was the sponsor last night a screening at the tax-payer supported Capitol Visitors Center of the pseudo documentary, “Food, Inc.” – described by its producer as “lift(ing) the veil on nation’s food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government’s regulatory agencies…”
This kind of “documentary” is actually the ego trip of its producers – none of whom has any more expertise in food science or on-farm production than the ability to do a web search – but the cruelest cut was the statement by Ms. Slaughter’s spokesperson: “The screening will show people just how bad the food industry is and, with luck, be a wake-up call for staffers and Members – and the public.”
I say we go talk with the Congressional Hunger Caucus about “how bad the food industry really is.”
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Those people have not considered what the banning of certain medications and growth promoters could do to our nations food supply. We are the best fed nation in the world but if restrictions of this kind were to be placed on the producers of this land then we could see a lot of people go to bed hungry.
In California we have State Senator Dean Florez trying every way he can to get some sort of bill passed to place restrictions on the use of low level antibiotics in animals used for food, or restrictions on the food produced from animals fed such antibiotics.
Sen Florez is termed out in the Calif legislature and has decided to run for Lt. Governor of CA in 2010. Coincidentally, this year in addition to the various versions of his antibiotics bills, he has authored legislation banning tail docking in dairy cattle, and the mandatory spay/neutering of dogs and cats; both bills supported by factions of the animal rights industry.
Suppose he expects to get some campaign contributions?