Inside D.C.

Politics cloaked in “science”

I’m not much different than most when I say I’m not good with change.  Mess with my understanding and relationship with people, places and things and I get uneasy.  So, imagine my itchiness when I watched this week Consumer Reports (CR) shift again from an objective consumer information source – who buys a car or a washing machine without checking out CR? – to being a tool to push the political agenda of its publisher Consumers Union (CU).

CR announced a story – “How Safe is Your Beef?,” set to hit newsstands September 3 – contending “conventional beef is twice as likely to contain superbugs as sustainable beef.”  I’m a tad skeptical of this “study” if only because the research was funded by CU political ally the Pew Charitable Trusts, folks with a long record of less-than-objective views on the use of antibiotics in agriculture.

The beef tested – 458 pounds bought at retailers of various sizes and persuasions in 26 states – was deemed “conventional” if the package didn’t carry a label proclaiming its sustainability, according to a story in meatingplace.com this week.  The meat was considered “more sustainably produced” if the samples declared the “beef came from cows (sic) that were raised without antibiotics and, in some cases, were either organic, grass-fed or both.”

The press release announcing the article says “18% of the beef samples from conventionally raised cows (sic) contained dangerous superbugs resistant to three or more classes of antibiotics used to treat illness in humans compared to just 9% of beef from samples that were sustainably produced.” Industry pointed out the bacteria found were not the types associated with foodborne illness in ground beef, and the type that usually are – Salmonella and STEC – are not reported in the CR findings.

The North American Meat Institute (NAMI) spun the study as confirming “the strong safety of ground beef,” noting the CR results were silent on highly pathogenic E. coli or Salmonella.  NAMI went on to say, “The bacteria identified in the Consumer Reports testing are the types that rarely cause foodborne illness.  Bacteria such as Staphylococcus aureus, Enterococcus and generic E. coli are commonly found in the environment and are not considered pathogenic bacteria.”

NAMI also warns drawing a connection between production method and antibiotic resistance is a bit of a stretch given resistance is ubiquitous in nature, and it’s pretty much what bacteria are supposed to do, i.e. mutate when challenged.  The association also pointed out FDA says it’s “inaccurate and alarmist” to say bacteria resistant to one or even a few antimicrobials, are “superbugs” if said bacteria are treatable using other chemicals.

Of course, this “scientific” report includes all kinds of calls to political action, including banning “the daily use” of antibiotics in healthy animals; making sure “meaningful” labels are not undermined by terms like “natural” which have nothing to do with how animals are raised, what they ate or if they were “confined;” adopting recommendations to expand animal welfare standards for organic beef; increasing government inspections at every slaughter and processing plant, and banning the sale of beef containing disease-causing, antibiotic-resistant Salmonella and prohibit chicken waste in cattle feed.

Dr. Omar Oyarzabal, Extension associate professor and food safety specialist at the University of Vermont, writing in the August 28 Food Safety News, points out scientists have found resistant bacteria in “ancient Arctic soil” and from microbes present in totally isolated, “uncontacted” South American Indian tribes.  He also recommends for your bedtime reading pleasure this week’s Morbidity & Mortality Report from the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC), in which “the authors present an appalling number of figures pointing out the impact of inappropriate antibiotic use in human medicine.”

Oyarzabal contrasts the CR and CDC articles, saying, “As expected, the article from Consumer Reports was sensationalistic and did exactly that.”  He cautions we must consider scientific work “much less publicized, but done with scientific rigor” that contribute to understanding the scope and reality of the resistance issue.  His point is that most parties look at resistance as a blame game, pitting one antibiotic use against the other, one food against another, when we should be looking at the use – in both human medicine and agriculture – in a more holistic way, and that part of that discussion must be an accelerated search for new antibiotics.

Getting back to the CR advertorial on “sustainable” versus conventional beef, I think the National Cattlemen’s Beef Assn. (NCBA) said it best.  Mandy Carr Johnson, senior executive director, Science & Product Solutions for NCBA, told meatingplace.com:  “The only helpful takeaway from the report for consumers is that all ground beef should be cooked to an internal temperature of 160 degrees, and confirmed with an instant-read meat thermometer.”