Industrial Livestock

Bugs in the System

Executive summary

Ethanol, antibiotics and what we don’t know

Alarming research coming out of the University of Minnesota raises concerns over the public health impacts of antibiotic use in ethanol production. 

Antibiotics in pork production: No pig in a poke

A rapidly growing body of evidence is spotlighting the overuse of antibiotics—and the antibiotic-resistant bacteria it breeds—in pork production as a widespread and serious danger to the American food supply and public health.

FDA limits antibiotics in livestock: Better late than never

Today the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced a ban for unapproved uses of cephalosporins in food animals. Cephalosporins, a class of critically important human antibiotics, are also widely used in livestock and poultry—in 2010 alone, nearly 54,094 lbs. were used in U.S.

FDA finally acts to ban unapproved use in food animals of critical human antibiotics

Keep Antibiotics Working (KAW) today applauded the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for prohibiting some off-label or “extralabel” use of cephalosporin antibiotics in food-producing animals, more than three years after that order was first issued but withdrawn.

The makings of an antibiotic-free farmer-evangelist

We recently got to know Russ Kremer, lifelong pork farmer, president for 10 years of the Missouri Farmers Union, and co-founder and president of Ozark Mountain Pork Cooperative.

Arsenic-it's in animal feed too

The media has been splashed with recent findings of elevated levels of arsenic in apple juice. Much less attention has been given to concerns about the presence of arsenic in meat.

Talking Turkey: Stuffing, Cranberries, Sweet Potatoes and…Arsenic?

Washington, D.C., November 22 – Nearly 88 percent of Americans surveyed by the National Turkey Federation eat turkey at Thanksgiving, but most will be blissfully unaware of what their turkey may have eaten—arsenic.

Obama administration lags on farm drivers of antibiotic resistance

Antibiotics are waning in effectiveness, and as a result more and more Americans are getting sick and dying of hard-to-treat—and hugely expensive—infections. The names of these superbugs, like MRSA, are becoming known to all.  

World's largest ethanol producer drops the antibiotics

Good news doesn’t come often enough in this business, so when POET—the world's largest ethanol producer—announced they’d decided to phase out antibiotic use in some of their ethanol plants, we celebrated.