Maryn McKenna

Journalist and Author

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MRSA in UK Turkeys Raises Questions of Communication, Transparency and Risk

December 2, 2013 By Maryn Leave a Comment

Image: OZinOH (CC), Flickr

Two years ago, I celebrated Thanksgiving here on Superbug by announcing some new studies on resistant bacteria being found in turkey meat in the US. That did not go over well; so this year, I saved the bad-turkey news for the post-holiday week. And here you go:

Just in time for our Thanksgiving — and in the ramp-up to English Christmas, for which turkey is a traditional dish — the UK’s Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency announced that livestock-associated MRSA, drug-resistant staph, has been found in UK poultry for the first time. From their not-very-informative press release:

The Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency (AHVLA) has identified the presence of Livestock-Associated Meticillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (LA-MRSA) in poultry on a farm in East Anglia… Once the poultry have been slaughtered and sold the owner will carry out cleansing and disinfection of their accommodation to ensure the next birds do not become colonised when they arrive on site. The AHVLA will revisit the farm after depopulation and thorough cleansing and disinfection to determine whether LA-MRSA is still present.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: antibiotics, food policy, food safety, foodborne, Resistance, Science Blogs, ST398, Turkey, UK

There's a Major Foodborne Illness Outbreak and the Government's Shut Down

October 7, 2013 By Maryn Leave a Comment

image: BokChoi-Snowpea (CC), Flickr

Late-breaking news, and I’ll update as I find out more: While the government is shut down, with food-safety personnel and disease detectives sent home and forbidden to work, a major foodborne-illness outbreak has begun. This evening, the Food Safety and Inspection Service of the US Department of Agriculture announced that “an estimated 278 illnesses … reported in 18 states” have been caused by chicken contaminated with Salmonella Heidelberg and possibly produced by the firm Foster Farms.

“FSIS is unable to link the illnesses to a specific product and a specific production period,” the agency said in an emailed alert. “The outbreak is continuing.”

(Updates to this post are at the bottom.)

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: CDC, chicken, FDA, foodborne, FSIS, salmonella, Science Blogs, Shutdown, USDA

News Round-Up: Food, Foodborne Illness, And Antibiotic Resistance In Food

May 5, 2013 By Maryn Leave a Comment

OK, still catching up. Today: food, foodborne illness, and antibiotic use and resistance in food — lots of news in a multi-item rundown. (Under normal circumstances, I’d give each of these items a post of its own; but since they all happened in the past few weeks, it seems better to note them and move on.)

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: antibiotics, CDC, consumer reports, E. coli, EIS, food, food policy, foodborne, Resistance, salmonella, Science Blogs, Turkey

Why We Can't See Inside Poultry Production, and What Might Change if We Could

January 29, 2013 By Maryn Leave a Comment

 

In the past months, there have been several troubling research reports, from different parts of the world, exploring aspects of the same problem: Multi-drug resistant bacteria are present in chicken, apparently because of the use of antibiotics in poultry production, and are passing to people who work with, prepare or eat chicken, at some risk to their health.

Here are a few of the publications:

  • From the US Department of Agriculture and University of Georgia, which has probably the deepest poultry-science research bench in the United States, an analysis of multi-drug resistant E. coli found on broiler chicken carcasses.
  • From several institutions in Germany, an analysis that finds “alarmingly high” levels of multi-drug resistant bacteria on retail chicken — including on organic chicken, which the authors say may be due to bacterial colonization of chicks before they are bought by organic producers.
  • From the Czech Republic, a report that bacteria found on chicken there are resistant to an additional class of drugs important in human medicine, fluoroquinolones.
  • From a multi-national team, a look at the close resemblance of multi-drug resistant E. coli between poultry and humans in several countries including the United States.
  • And most recently, two more European reports, from the Netherlands and from Sweden, of high rates of multi-drug resistant bacteria on chicken meat (and in the Netherlands paper, a comparison to resistant bacteria in humans as well).

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: agriculture, antibiotics, chicken, food, food policy, food safety, foodborne, poultry, Resistance, Science Blogs

One Family's Journey From Foodborne-Illness Victim to "Food Patriots"

December 19, 2012 By Maryn Leave a Comment

A quick post today, because I have deadlines, and because this Kickstarter closes tomorrow and you should take a look at it while you can.

In February of 2006, when he was 16 years old, Sam Spitz went out for lunch with his high school pals. They were athletes, and looking for a big meal, so they went to a pizza-pasta place. Sam, though, had an inkling of healthy eating from his mother, Jennifer Amdur Spitz, who liked to shop at farmers’ markets. He chose a chicken Caesar salad instead.

By the end of the school day, it seemed like a bad choice. He developed diarrhea so severe that Jennifer and his dad, Jeff Spitz, had to tape an adult diaper on him to get him to the emergency room. The ER staff assumed it was a foodborne illness, took a culture, and sent them home with a broad-spectrum antibiotic.

It had no effect. It took weeks, along with visits to specialists and more tests and more drugs and eventually a colonoscopy, before the family discovered that what had felled the strapping young athlete was an antibiotic-resistant foodborne illness: Campylobacter, a bug that frequently travels on chicken.

Sam Spitz was seriously sick for a month and recovering for many more. He was a pitcher, but missed his entire baseball season, along with the chance to be inspected by college recruiters. He was still on restricted activity when the football recruiters came around the following fall. He eventually recovered (and played football for University of Wisconsin) — but his family’s attitude toward food and food safety was forever changed.

The Spitzes, who are award-winning filmmakers, have documented their journey to a better understanding of our food system in a new film that they are now polishing, called “Food Patriots.” In it, they talk not only about their own dawning understanding of how our food is produced, but also about many other people who are trying to get food grown and distributed in a healthier, more equitable way.

“We were really insulated, as a family, from knowing where our food comes from, and from having the awareness that allows you to make healthy choices,” Jennifer told me. “But this film has a much bigger footprint than just our journey. We’re in it to provide a narrative, and some humor — but what we do is look at people who are inspiring us to think about, buy and eat food differently.”

The Spitzes are in their last 24 hours on their Kickstarter. They have made their initial goal, which was to fund post-production — but in the last day, they’ve been offered a match by a major donor. Anything they receive today will be doubled by the donor, and those funds will be spent getting the film out to communities for screenings.

Jennifer described the film to me as “zero-depth” — like the kind of public pool where you can stand at the end with just your toes wet, and move deeper at your own pace. “There have been a lot of scary, hit-you-over-the-head food films already, and people have already responded to that approach,” she said. “We don’t preach. We want to get people into conversation.”

Take a look.

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Footnote: If antibiotic-resistant Campylobacter sounds at all familiar, it may be because I wrote about it in my two-year investigation of foodborne illness for SELF Magazine last summer. Here’s that story and my post about it.

Flickr/mollyeh11/CC

 

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: chicken, FDA, food, food policy, foodborne, Resistance, Science Blogs, self

Advice for the Annual Observance of Food-Poisoning, Umm, Thanksgiving Day

November 20, 2012 By Maryn Leave a Comment

My grandparents — children of Irish and Scottish immigrants, for whom calories per penny was a much more important food value than fine cuisine — had a little mnemonic for Thanksgiving. It went like this:

Turkey, tetrazzini, ptomaine.

Perhaps that requires a little explanation.

The turkey part should be self-evident. Tetrazzini — a cream-sauce casserole based on spaghetti, one of those early 20th-century dishes invented to honor Italian opera stars — was what they did the second day with the turkey leftovers. Ptomaine (the “p” is silent) was what they worried lay in wait for them on the third. A late 19th-century term that has passed out of use, it derived from the notion that poisonous compounds lurked in rotting food.

For people who grew up before the antibiotic era — and who learned to cook when refrigerators were literal ice chests that kept things cool at best — “food poisoning” was a reasonable fear, and a risk they refused to take. On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, no matter how delicious it appeared, whatever remained of the turkey went into the trash.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: CDC, FDA, food, food policy, foodborne, Science Blogs, Thanksgiving, Turkey, USDA

Becoming Part of the Story (Maybe): The Peanut Butter Recall

October 5, 2012 By Maryn Leave a Comment


Earlier this week, something happened to me that happens to at least 48 million people in the United States every year: I got a foodborne illness. After a completely normal weekend and Monday, I woke in the middle of the night unusually thirsty; I glugged a big glass of water and stumbled back to bed. I got up Tuesday morning still thirsty, feeling kind of chilled and sluggish, and with no appetite. I skipped my usual fruit and yogurt, downed my usual two cups of coffee, skipped my usual hour-long walk and went to my desk.

About two hours later, my abdomen started to cramp.

About 30 minutes after that, I realized it would be a good idea if I went into the bathroom fairly soon.

I was there for a while. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: CDC, food, food policy, foodborne, salmonella, Science Blogs

News Round-Up: Sausage, Soil, Skeeters, Camping, China, Chimps And Other Hazards

August 31, 2012 By Maryn Leave a Comment

This has been my week: Oh, wow: I should write about that. No, wait — that. Damn, new news; I’ll blog this paper instead. Except, hold on — this one is great too…

So to solve my indecision before the week ends, here you go: Most of this week’s most interesting news, in round-up form.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: agriculture, antibiotics, China, counterfeit, drugs, food, food policy, food safety, foodborne, meat, MRSA, Reuters, russia, Science Blogs, South Korea, TB

The Superbugs In Your Dinner: A Storify

June 7, 2012 By Maryn Leave a Comment

As I said Wednesday would happen, I participated in a Twitterchat today about antibiotic-resistant foodborne illnesses arising as a result of agricultural antibiotic use. This is the subject of my investigative piece in the June issue of SELF Magazine. Chat participants were me and blogger and cancer survivor Lisa Bonchek Adams, with many constant readers checking in. And because I’m sure you were all busy, but I want you to know what we talked about, I made a Storify for you. You’re welcome.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: antibiotics, FDA, food, food policy, foodborne, Resistance, Science Blogs, self, twitter

The Superbugs in Your Dinner (Bonus: Twitterchat!)

June 6, 2012 By Maryn Leave a Comment

I have a new story up at SELF Magazine, where I’m privileged to do a long and often investigative piece about once a year. This one is close to my heart: It took two years to complete, and in that time I conducted 37 interviews and reviewed several hundred scientific papers.

Here’s what it says: The misuse of antibiotics in agriculture, particularly in livestock-raising, is creating antibiotic-resistant foodborne illnesses that are taking victims and their doctors by surprise.

We talk pretty often here about drug-resistant bacteria arising as a result of farm antibiotic use, and moving off the farm in a variety of ways. There is a lot of dispute, of course, about whether farm-caused antibiotic resistance has much effect on human health, or whether the various resistant illnesses that people contract arise instead from antibiotic misuse in daily life or in hospitals and health care.

But in this case, the illnesses are being caused specifically by classic foodborne bugs that have become resistant and are making people sick when the food is handled or eaten. The evidence is not 100 percent — no evidence ever is — but to me, these illnesses demonstrate the most direct link yet between antibiotic use on farms, and human illness far away from farm areas.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: antibiotics, FDA, food, foodborne, Resistance, Science Blogs, self

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