Dec 18, 2023 04:51 PM
Big Meat just can’t quit antibiotics
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/...stance-fda
EXCERPTS: . . . Thanks to those two actions alone, sales of medically important antibiotics for livestock plummeted 42 percent from 2015 to 2017. But in a concerning course reversal, antibiotic sales for use in livestock have ticked back up, increasing 12 percent from 2017 to 2022, per a new FDA report. Sales increased 4 percent in 2022 alone...
[...] In 2022, the chicken industry’s antibiotics purchasing slightly declined, but in every other major sector — cattle, pork, and turkey — antibiotic sales rose.
“Antibiotic sales to meat producers continue to increase despite efforts that the FDA has made,” Louis Sokolow, a policy associate with Frontier Group, a public health and sustainability research organization, told Vox. “The status quo of these small increases year over year is not enough to protect people from antibiotic-resistant bacteria.”
According to an analysis published in September by the Natural Resources Defense Council and One Health Trust, medically important antibiotics are increasingly going to livestock instead of humans. In 2017, the meat industry purchased 62 percent of the US supply. By 2020, it rose to 69 percent.
It’s a sobering turn of events with life-and-death implications. In 2019, antibiotic-resistant bacteria directly killed over 1.2 million people globally, including 35,000 Americans, and more than 5 million others across the world died from diseases where antibiotic resistance played a role — far more than the global toll of HIV/AIDS or malaria, leading the World Health Organization to call antibiotic resistance “one of the biggest threats to global health, food security, and development today.”
Public health advocates want to see the FDA take the threat much more seriously, and often point to Europe as a role model.
[...] It’s unlikely the FDA will follow in Europe’s footsteps any time soon. Asked about an EU-style ban on preventive use of antibiotics, an FDA spokesperson responded, “The laws in the US and our livestock population are not the same as that of the EU or other countries. The FDA’s initiatives to promote judicious use and reduce AMR [antimicrobial resistance] were devised specifically for the US and the conditions we face with the aim of maximizing effectiveness and cooperation of drug sponsors, veterinarians, and animal producers.”
The FDA and the US food industry have proven that they can make progress on the issue — but to keep antibiotics working, they need to do a lot more. That will require them to tackle beef and pork, two of the more stubborn and complex sectors of America’s meat system that just can’t seem to quit antibiotics, since doing so could demand substantive changes to how animals are farmed for food... (MORE - missing details)
Alarm from large increase in parents giving kids melatonin
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shot...cs-parents
EXCERPTS: What do you do when you can't get your kids to settle down to go to sleep? For a growing number of parents, the answer is melatonin.
Recent research shows nearly one in five school-age children and adolescents are now using the supplement on a regular basis. Pediatricians say that's cause for alarm.
[...] Melatonin is a hormone produced by your brain that helps regulate sleep-wake cycles. It's also sold as a dietary supplement and is widely used as a sleep aid.
Lauren Hartstein [...] was surprised by just how many kids are taking the supplement. "Nearly 6% of preschoolers, [ages] 1 to 4, had taken it, and that number jumped significantly higher to 18% and 19% for school-age children and pre-teens," she says.
As Hartstein and her co-authors recently reported in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, most of the kids that were using melatonin had been on it for a year or longer. And 1 in 4 kids were taking it every single night.
Breuner says that kind of widespread use is deeply troubling for several reasons. She says because melatonin is easy to find on store shelves, people assume it's just as safe as taking a vitamin. But melatonin is a hormone, and she says there's no real data on long-term use in children. She notes there are concerns that it could potentially interfere with puberty and glucose metabolism, among other things, though research is lacking.
[...] Dr. Heard-Garris says parents should definitely talk to their pediatrician before giving kids melatonin because it's possible to give too much. Signs of an overdose in kids include irritability, severe headaches, stomach pains and dizziness, and severe drowsiness, including difficulty rousing a child. "Those are the red flags," she says. Side effects can also include increased bed-wetting, "because the sleep is so deep," she adds.
[...] If parents do decide to give their children melatonin after checking with their pediatrician, Breuner recommends looking for a supplement with a USP label, which means its contents have been third-party tested by the U.S. Pharmacopeia to ensure they are free of contaminants and contain the amount of melatonin listed on the label.... (MORE - missing details)
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/...stance-fda
EXCERPTS: . . . Thanks to those two actions alone, sales of medically important antibiotics for livestock plummeted 42 percent from 2015 to 2017. But in a concerning course reversal, antibiotic sales for use in livestock have ticked back up, increasing 12 percent from 2017 to 2022, per a new FDA report. Sales increased 4 percent in 2022 alone...
[...] In 2022, the chicken industry’s antibiotics purchasing slightly declined, but in every other major sector — cattle, pork, and turkey — antibiotic sales rose.
“Antibiotic sales to meat producers continue to increase despite efforts that the FDA has made,” Louis Sokolow, a policy associate with Frontier Group, a public health and sustainability research organization, told Vox. “The status quo of these small increases year over year is not enough to protect people from antibiotic-resistant bacteria.”
According to an analysis published in September by the Natural Resources Defense Council and One Health Trust, medically important antibiotics are increasingly going to livestock instead of humans. In 2017, the meat industry purchased 62 percent of the US supply. By 2020, it rose to 69 percent.
It’s a sobering turn of events with life-and-death implications. In 2019, antibiotic-resistant bacteria directly killed over 1.2 million people globally, including 35,000 Americans, and more than 5 million others across the world died from diseases where antibiotic resistance played a role — far more than the global toll of HIV/AIDS or malaria, leading the World Health Organization to call antibiotic resistance “one of the biggest threats to global health, food security, and development today.”
Public health advocates want to see the FDA take the threat much more seriously, and often point to Europe as a role model.
[...] It’s unlikely the FDA will follow in Europe’s footsteps any time soon. Asked about an EU-style ban on preventive use of antibiotics, an FDA spokesperson responded, “The laws in the US and our livestock population are not the same as that of the EU or other countries. The FDA’s initiatives to promote judicious use and reduce AMR [antimicrobial resistance] were devised specifically for the US and the conditions we face with the aim of maximizing effectiveness and cooperation of drug sponsors, veterinarians, and animal producers.”
The FDA and the US food industry have proven that they can make progress on the issue — but to keep antibiotics working, they need to do a lot more. That will require them to tackle beef and pork, two of the more stubborn and complex sectors of America’s meat system that just can’t seem to quit antibiotics, since doing so could demand substantive changes to how animals are farmed for food... (MORE - missing details)
Alarm from large increase in parents giving kids melatonin
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shot...cs-parents
EXCERPTS: What do you do when you can't get your kids to settle down to go to sleep? For a growing number of parents, the answer is melatonin.
Recent research shows nearly one in five school-age children and adolescents are now using the supplement on a regular basis. Pediatricians say that's cause for alarm.
[...] Melatonin is a hormone produced by your brain that helps regulate sleep-wake cycles. It's also sold as a dietary supplement and is widely used as a sleep aid.
Lauren Hartstein [...] was surprised by just how many kids are taking the supplement. "Nearly 6% of preschoolers, [ages] 1 to 4, had taken it, and that number jumped significantly higher to 18% and 19% for school-age children and pre-teens," she says.
As Hartstein and her co-authors recently reported in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, most of the kids that were using melatonin had been on it for a year or longer. And 1 in 4 kids were taking it every single night.
Breuner says that kind of widespread use is deeply troubling for several reasons. She says because melatonin is easy to find on store shelves, people assume it's just as safe as taking a vitamin. But melatonin is a hormone, and she says there's no real data on long-term use in children. She notes there are concerns that it could potentially interfere with puberty and glucose metabolism, among other things, though research is lacking.
[...] Dr. Heard-Garris says parents should definitely talk to their pediatrician before giving kids melatonin because it's possible to give too much. Signs of an overdose in kids include irritability, severe headaches, stomach pains and dizziness, and severe drowsiness, including difficulty rousing a child. "Those are the red flags," she says. Side effects can also include increased bed-wetting, "because the sleep is so deep," she adds.
[...] If parents do decide to give their children melatonin after checking with their pediatrician, Breuner recommends looking for a supplement with a USP label, which means its contents have been third-party tested by the U.S. Pharmacopeia to ensure they are free of contaminants and contain the amount of melatonin listed on the label.... (MORE - missing details)
