ANIMAL FORUM

>Pats Note: This is deeply significant. This is Britains premier pig vet
>site, read everywhere. Not to put to fine a point on it, they have their
>hands up. They know the Americans are hot on their trail and are about to
>kick the hell out of them.
>
>Why, oh why did they hide it all up, for years too?
>
>If you thought that giving out the bank details of everyone with children
>was bad, knocking off grandmother is even more serious.
>
>Britains private vets will now turn Queens Evidence ( a form of plea
>bargaining) and place the blame, where it belongs, firmly on Britains
>corrupt State Veterinary Service.
>
>Ironically, the largest unrecorded group of premature deaths are livestock
>vets, pig farmers, meat workers and their families.
>
>It is all too easy to label efforts to clean up Britains veterinary
>industry and its government controllers, by seeing it as an attack on
>livestock farming.
>
>A little thought will see it as supportive to a healthy viable industry,
>safe for everyone involved: operators, owners, customers and even its vets
>and their families.

>http://www.thepigsite.com/swinenews/16316/canadian-researchers-find-drugresistant-staph-in-pigs-and-farmers
>
>
>Tuesday, November 20, 2007
>
>Canadian researchers find drug-resistant Staph in pigs and farmers
>
>US - Canadian researchers have found two major strains of the superbug MRSA
>on pigs - and pig farmers - in southwestern Ontario, the first time the
>pathogen has been reported in food animals in North America.
>
>One of the strains, they believe, passed from people to pigs. But the other,
>first seen in pigs in the Netherlands in 2003, seems to have originated in
>animals and moved into people.
>
>The senior author of the work said the findings dont cast in doubt the
>safety of meat produced on Ontario pig farms. But they do suggest pig farms
>could serve as sources of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus
>infections for people who work on them or live on them.
>
>The big public health concern in my mind is whether we might end up in the
>same situation as they have in Europe with this starting to become an
>important community pathogen, said senior author Dr. Scott Weese, a
>veterinarian at the Ontario Veterinary College in Guelph who specializes in
>the antibiotic resistant bugs that pass back and forth between people and
>animals.
>
>The concern is theres this reservoir in pigs thats being spread into
>people that work with pigs and now its being spread into the general
>population.
>
>People cooking or eating pork probably arent at greater risk of acquiring a
>MRSA infection by doing so, said Weese and other experts not involved in his
>research.
>
>The likelihood of food being a source (of infection) would probably be
>pretty remote, said Dr. Jeffrey Bender, program director for veterinary
>population medicine at the University of Minnesota.
>Emergence.
>
>A Dutch microbiologist who was one of the first researchers to spot the
>emergence of MRSA in pigs went even further, saying he has no concern that
>pork - which he eats rare - could be a source of the potentially serious
>infections.
>
>I dont believe in it and there is no evidence that there might be any
>route of transmission of MRSA, said Dr. Andreas Voss, professor of clinical
>microbiology and infection control at Radboud University Medical Center in
>Nijmegen.
>
>Its really mainly the direct contact with living animals that is the main
>risk.
>
>But whether MRSA in effluent from pig farms poses a human health risk is not
>yet known, Weese admitted. Its too soon to tell. I really dont have any
>idea whether its a potential problem. Its an area that needs to be looked
>at.
>
>Voss and some colleagues first spotted the emergence of MRSA on pig farms in
>the Netherlands in 2003, when two infants and a veterinarian were all found
>to be carrying a new strain of the bacteria. MRSA rates in that country are
>so low that three cases rang alarm bells. The investigation traced the
>source to pigs.
>
>Studies found that 25 per cent of Dutch pig farmers tested were carrying the
>strain, which has subsequently been found in Denmark, Germany, Austria,
>Italy, Singapore, Korea and now Canada.
>
>I assume its all over the place, Voss said in an interview from Prague on
>Monday.
>
>A followup three years later found that carriage rate in pig farmers had
>risen to 50 per cent. And a study Voss and his group are publishing in the
>December issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases showed that more than 20 per
>cent of all MRSA carriers or cases in the Netherlands have this particular
>strain.
>
>(At any given time between 20 to 30 per cent of people will carry Staph in
>their nasal passages or on their skin without being ill. These people are
>said to be colonized by the bug. Some will never get ill, but can pass the
>bacteria to others. Others will can go on to develop infections that range
>from boils and skin abscesses to life-threatening pneumonias or bloodstream
>infections.)
>
>Inspired by the Dutch data, Weese and his co-authors sampled pigs and pig
>farmers on 20 unidentified farms in southwestern Ontario. The findings of
>the research project were published in the journal Veterinary Microbiology.
>
>Just under half - 45 per cent - of the farms were found to have pigs or
>farmers carrying MRSA. A quarter of 285 pigs swabbed in their snouts and
>rumps were found to be carrying the bug. And 20 per cent of farmers (five of
>25) also tested positive for MRSA.
>European strain.
>
>Nearly 60 per cent of the bacterial isolates from pigs and pig farmers were
>of the European strain, which Weese thinks may have come to Canada in a
>person. The most common human strain of MRSA in this country, called USA100,
>was also found in some of the pigs and some of the pig handlers.
>
>It does raise the question: How does a bug like this get spread? Bender
>said of the findings.
>
>And there could be a number of ways. It could be animals. It could be
>antibiotic use. And clearly we dont know the answer to that.
>
>While many questions remain to be answered, the findings should be a red
>flag to health-care institutions which struggle to keep MRSA infections out
>because of the possibility of spread among vulnerable patients.
>
>Voss said in the Netherlands, where public health officials take aggressive
>measures to keep MRSA rates low, anyone who has contact with pig farms - the
>farmers, their families and veterinarians - is put in isolation and tested
>to see if they are carrying MRSA when they enter hospital.