About IATP

The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy promotes resilient family farms, rural communities and ecosystems around the world through research and education, science and technology, and advocacy.

Founded in 1986, IATP is rooted in the family farm movement. With offices in Minneapolis and Geneva, IATP works on making domestic and global agricultural policy more sustainable for everyone.

IATP Web sites

• IATP home page
• Ag Observatory
• Trade Observatory
• Health Observatory
• Community Forestry Resource Center

About Think Forward

Think Forward is a blog written by staff of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy covering sustainability as it intersects with food, rural development, international trade, the environment and public health.

Categories

• Alternative Policies
• Bioeconomy
• China
• Climate
• Common Ground Farm
• Environment and Agriculture
• Farm and Food Policy
• Food Challenge
• Food Crisis
• Health
• Healthy Food
• IATP Happenings
• Local Advantage
• Rural Communities
• Trade

Archives

• December 2009
• November 2009
• October 2009
• September 2009
• August 2009
• July 2009
• June 2009
• May 2009
• April 2009
• March 2009

RSS feeds

 Subscribe in a reader

Healthy Food

December 08, 2009

Time to get arsenic out of animal feed

Four years ago, IATP released test results which found that over 55 percent of uncooked chicken products in supermarkets and all 90 fast food chicken products we tested contained detectable levels of arsenic. Because of health risks associated with arsenic, we called for federal and state regulators to withdraw the approval of arsenic in animal feed.

Today, after four years of governmental inaction, IATP and the Center for Food Safety filed a legal petition with the Food and Drug Administration once again calling for the agency to act.

“Arsenic can be poisonous. Its use in animal feed, therefore, is unnecessarily risky and has not been shown to be safe given the latest science,” said IATP's David Wallinga, M.D. in a press release today. “To best protect public health, all avoidable exposures to arsenic should be eliminated. FDA can and should act.”

Here's the full petition and our 2006 report Playing Chicken: Avoiding Arsenic in Your Meat.

—Ben Lilliston

November 05, 2009

Farm to school programs growing despite challenges

When USDA Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan toured the St. Paul School Commissary earlier this week, the first thing she talked about was how complicated the logistics are when trying to provide healthier school lunches—particularly for larger urban districts. Heads in the meeting room immediately nodded. (see photo: IATP's JoAnne Berkenkamp and USDA Deputy Secretary Merrigan)

Yet, despite these challenges, the urgency of improving school lunch programs is rising. The Centers for Disease Control reported last month that most kids aren't getting enough fruits and vegetables. And the Institute for Medicine also published a paper last month citing school lunch and breakfast programs as critical to ensuring the health of our children.

Farm to school programs are seen as one tool toward providing healthier food to kids—and communities around the country are recognizing this. There are now over 2,000 farm to school programs around the country.

In Minnesota, we have been working with the Minnesota School Food Service Association to expand farm to school programs. “It’s exciting to see Farm to School participation growing all over the state—in the cities, in the suburbs and throughout greater Minnesota. This movement is growing by leaps and bounds,” IATP’s JoAnne Berkenkamp said in a press release we sent out today.

This fall and early next year, Congress will renew the Child Nutrition Act—an important opportunity to expand resources for farm to school programs.

As Deputy Secretary Merrigan said, "The need is great, the challenges are great, but just because they're great doesn't mean we're not ready to tackle them."

—Ben Lilliston

November 02, 2009

Estrogen with that drink?

CNN reported last week on at least two children, ages 10 and 13 being treated for aggressive breast cancer. It’s apparently part of a broader trend of breast cancer striking earlier and earlier. For this generation of women carrying the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, breast cancer is being diagnosed six years earlier than in the previous generation. No one can say why.

By and large, breast cancer isn’t a genetic disease. Like nearly all cancers and other chronic diseases, the causes are multiple, and a mixture of environment and genes. So it’s particularly concerning that we continue to put strong synthetic estrogens, like Bisphenol A, in our food and drink containers.

See IATP’s Smart Guide to Hormones in the Food System and Smart Meat and Dairy Guide for more information. The take home message: There’s nothing smart about adding synthetic hormones to the food chain. Especially not when girls, 10 and 13, are fighting breast cancer.

—David Wallinga,

October 30, 2009

IATP 2009 Staff Garden wrap-up

IATP's Emily Barker—a flagship member of our Garden Crew—reports on the 2009 staff garden. Be sure to see our Facebook Staff Garden photo album!

The harvest this summer in the IATP staff garden was one of true beauty and bounty. Several weeks saw an abundance of tomatoes, green peppers, zucchini, basil, kale and chard, along with a good showing of cucumbers and eggplants. The carrots were a bit on the short side, but they were very tasty. The beans grew quite well, but were overtaken by the towering tomato plants, and therefore weren’t harvested before they became too woody to eat. Powdery mildew, mosaic virus and the ever present squirrels provided challenges, but reminded us of the reality of growing food in a sustainable, non-chemical-laden way. The reward was unforgettable. 

The season came to an end in early October, when freezing temperatures hit much of Minnesota. We were able to do a pre-frost dash to salvage many good sized, but not quite ripe tomatoes, and had a wonderful feast of fried green tomatoes. The snow a few days later forced us to finally admit that it was time to prepare the garden for a long winter sleep, although the kale, chard and ever hardy sage are still standing. Soon even these will be put to rest and all that will remain will be our memories (see our pictures on Facebook) and dreams of seasons to come.

—Andrew Ranallo

October 29, 2009

Connecting the dots: Chemicals, food ingredients and learning disorders

Much of the U.S. regulatory system covering toxins is based on assessing individual chemicals and their effects on human health, rather than what happens in the real world—where we are exposed to multiple chemicals that interact with each other in a variety of ways. In a new article published in the peer-reviewed Behavioral and Brain Functions Journal, led by former FDA researcher Renee Default and co-authored by IATP's David Wallinga, M.D., among others, researchers look at the links between child learning and behavior disorders, low-level mercury exposure, mineral deficiencies and food additives.

The article suggests an important new model for assessing how these disparate factors in the food system may be interacting to create a much bigger overall problem than typically is appreciated by looking at these diet factors individually. For example, overall mercury exposure, including many sources aside from food, has been linked to an increased in rates of special education services and autism. The study’s authors looked at data going back to the mid-1980s provided by the State of California and found that cases of diagnosed Autism Spectrum Disorder in California peaked at the same time as peak consumption years for high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in the United States.

“Because many expensive behavior and learning disorders in kids appear to be on the rise,” says Dr. Wallinga in our press release, “it’s imperative that we take steps at many levels to eliminate unnecessary exposures to mercury and other known brain toxins we still expose our children to. In the real-world food and chemical environments we have created, children are exposed to many different toxic chemicals through multiple avenues. The latest science examines how these exposures and health effects interact. In these times of escalating health costs, it’s critical that public policy steps track this new systems thinking in updating our regulatory system for chemicals and food.”

In a peer-reviewed article published earlier this year in Environmental Health, scientists found detectable mercury in commercial HFCS samples collected by the FDA in 2005. Mercury cell chlor-alkali chemicals have historically been used to manufacture a number of food ingredients including color additives such as FD&C Yellow 5, FD&C Yellow 6 and HFCS. You can read the full article in Behavioral and Brain Functions Journal here.

—Ben Lilliston

September 28, 2009

Fresh ideas on food

If you could make one major change in our food system, what would it be? This is the question IATP's Food and Society Fellows program put to some of the leading food system thinkers in the country. The results are in the first FAS digest, chock full of great ideas to transform our food system to become more healthy, fair and sustainable. You'll find ideas on improving school lunches, combining food and faith, helping women farmers, ensuring fair working conditions for farmworkers and fair prices for farmers, and the launching of school gardens.

As IATP's Mark Muller writes in the digest's intro, "These remarkable ideas give us a greater appreciation for what is possible. The diversity of the fresh ideas also demonstrates the breadth of issues affected by food systems."

Check out Fresh Ideas on food.

—Ben Lilliston

September 21, 2009

Why Danish farmers stopped feeding antibiotics to their animals

A war of words has erupted between the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) and some leading advocates for reducing unnecessary antibiotics in animal feed, like Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Pew Commission on Industrial Animal Production.

The best public estimates currently say that 70 percent of all antibiotics in the U.S. are fed to healthy animals, to help them grow faster on less animal feed, and to compensate for the fact that animals  are typically raised under stressful, closely confined conditions that tend to increase their likelihood of getting sick. 

So it's particularly timely to read a new report from the chief government veterinarians in Denmark, where more than 10 years ago—and at the behest of that country's meat producers—they stopped feeding human antibiotics to animals to make them grow faster.

Why is Denmark so important when it comes to antibiotics and animals? Well, it's a leading meat producer and the largest exporter of pork in the world.

So, what happened? More than a decade ago, Danish meat producers looked hard at their own use of antibiotics and realized that not only could it undermine public health, but that their markets for exporting meat products were at risk as well. Specifically, Danish veterinary experts had been warning that continuing the use of these antibiotics could compromise their future effectiveness for treating serious infections in both humans and animals, since they seemed to be helping to create more antibiotic resistant bacteria.

From 1998 to 1999, Danish producers stopped using antibiotics to promote animal growth, first in chickens, then in hogs. Eventually, their entire agricultural use of antibiotics dropped by over half. Among several different kinds of bacteria found in farm animals and on food, drug resistance declined in a major way. This represents a huge improvement to public health.

Other benefits outlined by the report:

• No worsening in the health of animals. Sick animals get treated with antibiotics, same as always. Healthy animals just don’t get antibiotics in their feed.
• Productivity of Danish agriculture continues to improve—just with a lot fewer antibiotics.
• No change in the price of meat for consumers.

Getting rid of routine antibiotics added to animal feed in the U.S. would seem to be the kind of public health win-win that everyone could get behind. Not the AVMA, for some reason. Could it be that the largest producers of animal antibiotics, like Bayer and Pfizer, are major supporters?

—David Wallinga,

September 15, 2009

Close Encounters of the Mashed Potato Kind

In one of two new videos released last week, a boy named Dreyfus builds a mash potato mountain at the school lunch table. This spoof of Close Encounters of the Third Kind has Dreyfus telling his classmates, "What we eat. It means something." Suddenly, his mountain of unappetizing mashed potatoes transforms into healthy food and the kids celebrate.

The second video is a Mastercard spoof focusing on the "priceless" value of healthy school lunches. The videos, by IATP Food and Society Fellows Shalini Kantayya, Nicole Betancourt and Debra Eschmeyer, are helping to launch the One Tray, One Nation campaign, pushing for a new school food system that supports healthy children, local farms and smart schools.

The Child Nutrition Act, which expires on September 30, determines what more than 30 million children eat at school. The One Tray, One Nation campaign is advocating for  $250 million over 5 years, with $50 million mandatory, to support local foods, farm to school and school garden grants to schools; the establishment of a farm to institution initiative within the Secretary of Agriculture’s Office; and increased funding for improving and evaluating school food procurement. The Farm to School Network gives you the details.

Check out the great videos, and take action with One Tray, One Nation to support healthier school lunches for all.

—Ben Lilliston

September 14, 2009

Food, water and filmmaking: this month's Radio Sustain

In the newest IATP Radio Sustain podcast, we sit down with Brother David Andrews to discuss the fundamental human right to food and water and how this right is being established internationally. Next, we talk with Wayne Rogers of the Toronto Food Policy Council about what a food policy council is, and why every city could use one. Lastly, Filmmaker Ana Joanes discusses her new documentary FRESH and the optimism she found after exploring the farms, businesses and people that are changing—and improving— the American food system.

Listen to the entire episode here (mp3).

—Andrew Ranallo

September 10, 2009

Industry standards vs. public welfare in produce food safety policy

A new report, issued today by IATP and Food & Water Watch titled “Bridging the GAPs: Strategies to Improve Produce Safety, Preserve Farm Diversity and Strengthen Local Food Systems,” explains why the current (non) food safety system for produce growers needs to change, and offers several ideas on how to improve safety and balance the playing field for small, diversified and organic farms.

Currently, a patchwork of public and private protocols are being used ostensibly to ensure food safety on produce farms, including the federal Good Agriculture Practices (GAPs), the Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement (LGMA), private industry “super metrics,” and international food safety protocols. In the absence of federal regulations governing on-farm food safety, private industry third party auditors are quickly becoming the standard—not only for companies, but also for larger institutional buyers like hospitals or schools.

But these private industry protocols are geared almost exclusively towards large-scale, single crop operations. For small and diversified farms, the industry requirements effectively close them out of the market. Audit requirements differ greatly among buyers, most require extensive documentation, testing and other added costs; and many requirements conflict with those of environmental programs supported by state and federal agencies.

“Most produce-related food-borne illnesses have been traced to processors, not to the farm,” said IATP's Marie Kulick in today's press release. “For farmers, it’s important to have transparent, inclusive standards that reflect the diversity of U.S. farm operations. A nationally supported produce safety program can benefit everyone—more farms participating, safer food for consumers.”

View the full report here and get more information at IATP.org and foodandwaterwatch.org.

—Andrew Ranallo

September 09, 2009

Family farm, ag groups push to restrict overuse of antibiotics for animals

Numerous agriculure and family farm organizations have issued a letter to President Barack Obama and Senate leaders urging support for the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (PAMTA) S. 619, in an effort to reduce the widespread overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture.

More than 70 percent of all antibiotics in the U.S. are added to animal feed to promote growth and manage stresses of animals in confinement housing. While PAMTA would still allow farmers to treat sick animals with antibiotics, it would withdraw the approval of seven specific classes of medically important antibiotics for nontherapeutic feed additive use. Under the bill, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would review each antibiotic to determine if there is a reasonable certainty of no harm to public health.

According to the letter: "In supporting a restriction on nontherapeutic use of antibiotics, the FDA is joining a broad consensus of physicians, scientists and other governments that have taken the same position. The American Medical Association, the Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organization (WHO), and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science have all called for restrictions on the use of antibiotics for nontherapeutic purposes in food animals. And in 2006, on recommendation from the WHO, the European Union banned nontherapeutic antibiotic use in food animals."

IATP President Jim Harkness said in our press release, "The FDA believes we should act. We have thousands of farmers around the country who are already raising livestock without antibiotics. Now, it’s time for Congress to act.”

For more on how the overuse of antibiotics in raising food animals effects public health, check out the Keep Antibiotics Working Web site.

—Andrew Ranallo

September 04, 2009

Farm to Fork Dilemmas for Food Safety

Farmers markets and community supported agriculture (CSAs) are the ultimate in food traceability. But they make up only a tiny portion of the food system. The rest is more difficult. There's been a decade-old global push for an integrated food safety system from farm to fork. In the latest issue of Global Food Safety Monitor, IATP's Steve Suppan reports on why building a "farm to farm" food safety system is so difficult.

Steve reviews the political compromises that watered down the food safety bill passed by the House of Representatives in July, Nestle cookie dough contamination and private company testing, and the latest from the World Health Organization and Codex Alimentarius Commission on food safety.

You can read the full Global Food Safety Monitor here.

—Ben Lilliston

August 28, 2009

MRSA on the farm—from pigs to vets to the rest of us

Last spring, Nicholas Kristof opened eyes about the link between pigs, health and MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus).

The piece reported on science, stronger in Europe and less well-developed in the U.S., that farms are important reservoirs for MRSA, the staph superbug that is wreaking havoc in hospitals and healthcare budgets.

We now know there is MRSA in North American pigs and on farms. What's less clear is how much this is impacting the human population now and will into the future. The big worry is that farm-associated MRSA will open another pathway for this serious infection—which is resistant to treatment from multiple antibiotics—to pop up in communities. The more farmers, farmworkers and vets carrying MRSA (or, in technical parlance, are "colonized" with MRSA), the greater the risk that its appearance in communities will occur—if not now, then eventually.

In one European study, veterinarians were found to carry farm-associated MRSA at rates several hundred times greater than the general population. Until recently, though, we had no idea whether the same problem existed in U.S. vets.

Last year, though, U.S. swine vets used the occasion of one of their own conferences to swab the nostrils of 150 volunteers. Nostrils are one place where MRSA in particular likes to hang out in humans.

The results are as follows:

Results from 37 volunteers who were not veterinary graduates (mostly students) tested negative, leaving 113 actual working vets sampled: 26 from abroad and 87 from the U.S. Of those, 7 percent of the U.S. swine vets (and a comparable percent of the foreign vets) tested positive for MRSA. This rate is about seven times greater than the rate at which we find MRSA colonized in the average American.

The particular clone, or kind, of MRSA found is important, too. In five of the vets, the MRSA found was closely related to the "livestock-associated" MRSA that we now know is widespread in Dutch and Canadian hogs and, in some cases, on pork meat.

Since this farm-associated MRSA was found on vets working in three different states, it raises concerns that this MRSA clone is widespread across U.S. hog farms. Earlier this year, a limited study in Iowa found MRSA in 45 percent of hogs sampled from two swine facilities.

Researchers from Ohio, Iowa and Minnesota are now doing more comprehensive testing to see how widespread the problem is across the country. Expect to hear more this Fall as they start reporting their results.

—David Wallinga,

August 25, 2009

Foreign hormones in food—atrazine is just one of many

On Sunday, the New York Times reported on new research suggesting the common pesticide, atrazine (often used on corn), may be more dangerous to human health at lower levels than previously thought.

According to the Times, "Recent studies suggest that, even at concentrations meeting current federal standards, the chemical may be associated with birth defects, low birth weights and menstrual problems."

Atrazine is just one of a slew of foreign hormones that contaminate or are intentionally used in our industrialized food system. Like atrazine, science now implicates many of them as contributors—even at very low levels of exposure—to hormone-related chronic diseases.

The latter includes not only birth defects and reproductive problems, but also diseases of the immune system, nervous system, and cancer—especially including breast and prostate cancer. 

Today, IATP released its new Smart Guide: Hormones in the Food System—an overview of dozens of different chemical-disrupting hormones that we likely ingest or are exposed to each day.

The Smart Guide covers steroids and arsenic given to food animals to spur more rapid growth: rbGH, hormone-disrupting pesticides, synthetic hormones in food packaging, as well as other hormone-disrupting food contaminants (such as dioxins, PCBs and flame retardants).

The bad news is that common, low-level exposure to these hormones just keeps looking worse, the more closely scientists study them. On the other hand, consumers have some easy, common-sense steps they can take to reduce their exposure.

The Smart Guide recommends eating low-fat meats and dairy products, eating certified organic when possible, avoiding pesticide hormones and using hormone-free cans and bottles. The guide also lists a series of steps for policymakers to take.

Check out the full Smart Guide.

—David Wallinga,

August 17, 2009

Honeybees, High Fructose Corn Syrup and Us

New science published on July 31st is the first to look closely at levels of HMF, or Hydroxymethylfurfural, in high fructose corn syrup used as a feedstock for commercial honeybee operations. The study is important not only because of how it might affect honeybees, but also due to HFCS’s ubiquity in many junk foods and beverages marketed to children.

Under certain conditions, fructose can degrade into HMF, which can be toxic to bees and humans. At sufficient levels, for example, HMF can cause ulceration of the gut, resulting in bee dysentery. In test tube studies, HMF also recently was found to damage DNA, which also has important potential implications for humans consuming HFCS. HMF metabolites in the body, like  5-sulfoxymethylfurfural, are also a potentially serious human threat, and are detected in urine after exposure to HMF in the diet.

 The new study found that under heat and over time, HMF levels in commercial HFCS can greatly increase. The pH of the HFCS also appears important. For the last several years, huge numbers of bee colonies have been dying off for as yet undetermined reason or reasons, deemed Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). This has obvious ecological implications, but also is a food security threat. Many human foods depend on bee pollination. HMF is found in honey, for example, and international food safety standards (Codex Alimentarius) prohibit the sale for human consumption of honey with HMF levels greater than 40 ppm (parts per million).

While this study falls short of naming HMF as a contributor to CCD, it does point to the need for routine testing of HFCS for HMF—there is none currently. Along with recent science pointing to the routine contamination of HFCS with mercury, due to the use of mercury cell chlor-alkali products in its production, this new science highlights how little oversight there has been of HFCS, which now accounts for an estimated one in ten calories in the average American’s diet.

—David Wallinga,

August 13, 2009

Food Safety in the Legislative Grinder

Before they broke for summer recess, the House of Representatives passed a bill designed to improve food safety. In a new commentary, IATP board member and former USDA official Rod Leonard dissects how jurisdictional battles among House committees ultimately weakened the bill and set back more fundamental food safety policy reform. You can read the full commentary here.

—Ben Lilliston

July 29, 2009

WIC Gets an Upgrade

The Women, Infants and Children Nutrition program (WIC) is one of the most important government programs for low-income families. WIC's food package provides vouchers for milk, eggs, cheese, cereal and other food items. Now, for the first time in it's 35-year existence, it's getting an overhaul—and that requires retail food vendors who accept WIC vouchers to make fresh fruits and vegetables available.  

States have until September 30, 2009, to update their food package and there is some latitude among states in how they will implement the new requirements. Minnesota will implement its new rules on August 1. Those rules take the fruits and vegetables requirement a step further by setting a minimum stocking requirement. Many low-income communities, in both rural and urban parts of the country, do not have easy access to grocery stores. WIC participants are often forced to rely on corner stores without much of a selection of healthy food—particularly perishable items like fruits and vegetables.

IATP is working with the Minnesota Department of Health to publicize the new rules in corner stores around the state. And we are working with food distributors in Minnesota that supply corner stores to make it easier for those stores to stock fresh, high-quality produce. Our press release has the details.

—Ben Lilliston

July 28, 2009

Ethanol Industry Explores Options to Antibiotics

Earlier this month, IATP reported on the widespread and unnecessary use of antibiotics by the ethanol industry. IATP's Julia Olmstead visited a Wisconsin ethanol plant last week that is using a hops-based alternative to antibiotics to manage bacteria growth in the fermentation process. Watch her video below to learn more.

—Ben Lilliston

July 16, 2009

Getting Antibiotics Out of Ethanol

Unnecessary antibiotic use in livestock production is a massive contributor to the growing specter of antibiotic resistance. But in a study released today, we report on a lesser known source of non-therapeutic antibiotic use: the ethanol industry.

For decades, ethanol producers have added antibiotics to the fermentation process to control bacterial outbreaks. The practice attracted little concern until last year, when the FDA began testing samples of distillers grains, a nutrient-rich ethanol co-product that is sold as feed for cattle, dairy cows, pigs and poultry. The testing revealed residues of four types of antibiotics, and the results implied that these antibiotics (erythromycin, tylosin, virginiamycin and penicillin) are moving from the fermenter tanks to our food system. 

Unnecessary antibiotic use is the bad news. But our research found some good news, too. Effective, cost-competitive antibiotic-alternatives are widely available and are already used by nearly 45 percent of the ethanol industry. We found that statistic inspiring, and in our new report, we ask the ethanol industry to go a step further and enact a voluntary antibiotics ban. Given the risks of antibiotic overuse, and given the effective, widely available antibiotic alternatives, there is really no good argument the ethanol industry can make against this action.

Read all about it here, and learn why getting antibiotics out of ethanol just makes sense.

—Julia Olmstead

July 06, 2009

When the Fly in Your Soup May Carry Superbugs

The rise in illnesses due to antibiotic resistant bacteria has always been both easier and harder to understand than scientists have led us to believe.

Easier because on the one hand, the problem all boils down to one maxim: "The more we use them, the faster we lose them (antibiotics, that is)." In articulating his theory of natural selection, Charles Darwin fleshed out the concept. We live within a huge ecosystem of bacteria in which we humans are just one small cog. When we introduce a stressor into that system—antibiotics—we create the conditions where the bugs that most naturally resistant those antibiotics will be the ones that thrive and come to dominate our mutual environments.

Harder to understand, perhaps, because this bacterial ecosystem is a much more complex, nuanced world than most of us ever think about. It turns out that bacteria can swap their genes with ease with even unrelated families of bacteria. This includes the genes that render them resistant to antibiotics. Moreover, because these drug resistant genes are often physically connected to one another, bacteria that before was killable with several antibiotics, could, in one fell swoop, become much less killable. 

What prompted this blog is the latest study (Graham J et al. Sci Total Environ. April 2009) showing that these bugs and the genes that make them resistant could be carried by flies—yes, flies—from farms to elsewhere. Now foolishly, about 70 percent of all antibiotic supplies in the U.S. are used as additives to animal feed for chickens, pigs and beef cattle to make them grow faster under more stressful, confined conditions prevalent in factory farms. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University looked at poultry manure from these factory farms and compared the drug resistance of the bacteria in the litter with the bacteria on the flies collected nearby. And guess what, the drug resistance was pretty much the same.

We don't know where else those flies were headed to, but wherever it is, the implications aren't good.

So, next time you do find a fly in your soup, just say, "Waiter, no superbugs, please."

—David Wallinga,