MRSA Bacteria in Your Grocery Store’s Meat Products

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteria (MRSA), which can cause serious, life-threatening infections of the bloodstream, skin, lungs, and other organs, and is resistant to a number of antibiotics, has been found to be more prevalent in grocery store raw pork products than previously thought.

When the University of Iowa College of Public Health and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy tested 395 samples from 36 stores in Iowa, Minnesota, and New Jersey, they found 7 percent carried MRSA.

“This study shows that the meat we buy in our grocery stores has a higher prevalence of staph than we originally thought,” says lead study author Tara Smith, Ph.D., interim director of the UI Center for Emerging and Infectious Diseases and assistant professor of epidemiology. “With this knowledge, we can start to recommend safer ways to handle raw meat products to make it safer for the consumer.”

The study also noted that pork raised with antibiotics or antibiotic growth promotants were not significantly different in MRSA contamination from antibiotic-free pork products.

“We were surprised to see no significant difference in antibiotic-free and conventionally produced pork,” Smith says. “Though it’s possible that this finding has more to do with the handling of the raw meat at the plant than the way the animals were raised, it’s certainly worth exploring further.”

Genetically modified corn losing resistance to major pest

Bt corn, one of the nation’s most widely produced crops, is thought to be losing its natural resistance to the western corn rootworm, a pest that feeds on the roots of corn and could potentially wreak economic havoc if it continues to spread.

Currently the infestations remain isolated, but concerns have been growing ever since Bt corn infestations have been discovered in four Midwestern states, a sign that the repeated planting of the corn strain – instead of being rotated with other crops – is enabling the insects’ resistance to the crop’s pest-fighting powers. Many farmers are foregoing rotation in order to cash in on the high corn prices.

Bt corn was introduced to farmers in 2003 and allowed growers to bring in bountiful harvests using fewer chemicals because the corn naturally produces a toxin that poisons the common pest.

Because of the corn farmers’ current – and most likely ongoing – practices, some scientists fear it could already be too late to prevent the rise of resistance. In addition, they’re also concerned about the problem becoming more widespread due to the rootworm larvae growing into adult beetles that can fly and migrate into new areas.

If rootworms do become resistant to Bt corn, it “could become the most economically damaging example of insect resistance to a genetically modified crop in the U.S.,” said Bruce Tabashnik, an entomologist at the University of Arizona. “It’s a pest of great economic significance — a billion-dollar pest.”

The next agricultural revolution may be sparked by fungi

The use of fungi on crops may help to greatly increase food production for the growing needs of the planet without the need for massive amounts of fertilizers.

Mycorrhizal fungi, a type of fungus that can live in symbiosis with plant roots, help plants grow larger by acquiring the essential nutrient phosphate, a key component of fertilizers, for the plant.

“The United Nations conservatively estimates that by the year 2050 the global human population is expected to reach over 9 billion. Feeding such a population represents an unprecedented challenge since this goes greatly beyond current global food production capacity,” says Ian Sanders of the University of Lusanne, Switzerland.

Sanders spoke at the 111th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in New Orleans yesterday and told the audience that phosphate levels in the soil are rapidly being depleted and that in most tropical soils, plants have enormous difficulty in obtaining phosphate.

Increasing demand for the nutrient is driving up prices and farmers are having to spend a huge amount of money on phosphate fertilizer. Some countries are now stockpiling phosphate to feed their populations in the future, according to Sanders.

Recent biotechnological breakthroughs now allow scientists to produce massive quantities of the fungus that can be suspended in high concentrations in a gel for easy transportation.

Sanders and his colleagues are currently testing the effectiveness of this gel on crops in the country of Colombia where they have discovered that with the gel they can produce the same yield of potato crop with less than half the amount of phosphate fertilizers.

“While our applied research is focused on Colombia it could be applied in many other tropical regions of the world,” says Sanders.

Green roofs save energy and protect environment

Green roofs – like the one pictured above at the Con Edison building in New York City – protect the environment by absorbing pollution and capturing rain water, which helps prevent runoff from clogging sewer systems.

Columbia University researchers have been studying the beneficial impact of green roofs, and note that if New York City’s 1 billion square feet of roofs were transformed into green roofs, it would be possible to keep more than 10 billion gallons of water a year out of the city sewer system, according to the study led by Stuart Gaffin, research scientist at Columbia’s Center for Climate Systems Research.

New York City, like other older urban centers, has a combined sewer system that carries storm water and wastewater. When sewer overflow happens during heavy rains, the system must discharge a mix of storm water and sewage into New York Harbor, the Hudson River, the East River and other waterways. The green roof is a more cost-effective way of preventing overflow of the city’s storm drains.

The green roof atop the Con Edison building holds 21,000 plants on a quarter of an acre and retains about 30 percent of rainwater. It saves energy by providing insulation – keeping the roof cool in the summer and the building warm during winter – and reducing urban air temperatures.  The Columbia University study concluded that based on the cost of building and maintaining a green roof it costs as little as 2 cents a year to capture each gallon of water.

U.S. corn belt experiencing rapidly depleting topsoil

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) reports that Iowa farms are rapidly losing topsoil, up to 12 times faster than government estimates. Their report is based on data accumulated by Iowa State University (ISU), whose methods provide an unprecedented degree of precision in monitoring soil erosion.

EWG provided additional data in their report based on aerial surveys they conducted over the affected regions, along with information gathered from interviews with Corn Belt experts, that indicate soil erosion and polluted runoff are likely far worse than even the disturbing ISU numbers suggest.

“What is happening on Iowa farm fields is shocking but goes largely unnoticed,” said Craig Cox, who manages EWG’s agriculture programs from its Ames, Iowa office. Cox is the lead author of Losing Ground.

“We’ve grown complacent thinking we have the soil erosion problem under control, but instead it looks as if we are losing ground in our decades-old fight against this most fundamental and damaging problem in agriculture,” Cox said.

See the full report here: “Losing Ground” by Environmental Working Group

U.S. meat and poultry is widely contaminated with drug-resistant bacteria

A nationwide study conducted by the Translational Genomics Research Institute showed that nearly half of meat and poultry samples taken from grocery stores were contaminated with strains of Staphylococcus aureus, a bacteria linked to a wide range of human diseases. More than half of the bacteria were drug resistant to at least three classes of antiobiotics. S. aureus can cause many types of illnesses, from minor skin infections to life-threatening diseases, such as pneumonia, endocarditis, and sepsis.

The study included 136 samples covering 80 different brands of beef, chicken, turkey, and pork from 26 retail grocery stores in five U.S. cities: Los Angeles, Chicago, Fort Lauderdale, Flagstaff, and Washington, D.C.

“The fact that drug-resistant S. aureus was so prevalent, and likely came from the food animals themselves, is troubling, and demands attention to how antibiotics are used in food-animal production today,” said Lance B. Price, Ph.D., senior author of the study.

Densely-stocked industrial farms, where food animals are steadily fed low doses of antibiotics, are ideal breeding grounds for drug-resistant bacteria that move from animals to humans, the report says.

“This study shows that much of our meat and poultry is contaminated with multidrug-resistant Staph. Now we need to determine what this means in terms of risk to the consumer,” said Dr. Keim, a co-author of the paper.  Unfortunately for U.S. consumers, the federal government does not screen meat and poultry products for S. aureus.

Popularity of urban gardening growing among city dwellers

With food prices soaring and interest in improved environmental and lifestyle practices becoming more widespread, city dwellers are looking to community gardening as a means of empowering themselves.

Recently in Washington DC, a handful of organizations and hundreds of residents gathered at an urban gardening forum to promote the local food movement.

Rooting DC, a Washington DC organization that brings community members together for urban gardening and agriculture, and continual development of city gardening projects, was on hand at the event to distribute free seeds to the public.

One of the forum’s goals was to show residents how to work with small growing spaces. “We can grow our food in as small a space as a flower pot, but we work with residents to use spaces as small as three feet by three feet (0.9 meter),” said Dennis Chestnut, member of a Washington DC gardening group. “So that is what we consider an ideal size for a small space garden.”

The organizers of the event, now in its fourth year, are looking to create a bigger movement of sustainable local food systems, with their sights on eventually going global.

New farming method beneficial for climate and crop yields

A lesser discussed scientific theory, it is believed nitrous oxide contributes 300 times more to global warming than carbon dioxide. So scientists have been searching for ways to reduce nitrous oxide emissions, especially that arise from farming, in a practical and financially viable manner. One group of researchers at the University of Missouri Greenley Research Center has been working toward developing a specific method to reduce the application of nitrogen fertilizers while increasing corn grain production.

By using a combined method of strip tillage (tilling a field in strips instead of the entire field) and banded fertilizer (applying the fertilizer during the process of planting the seeds), the UM team showed that farmers can use less energy, reduce soil erosion, and conserve soil moisture in a large area of the field. Additionally, the nitrogen stays deep in the soil, where it less susceptible to environmental loss.

“The main goal for our team has been to identify agricultural practices that maintain or increase production while reducing the environmental impact,” said Peter Motavalli, associate professor in the MU Department of Soil, Environmental and Atmospheric Sciences, and who directed the research focused on measurements of soil nitrous oxide emissions. “There hasn’t been much data on greenhouse gas emissions for Missouri, and we hope to provide information on how much nitrogen is being lost as nitrous oxide with different agricultural practices so growers can make informed choices depending on their farm operation and environmental conditions.”

How organic milk is healthier

Organic milk has been found to contain higher levels of omega-3 and polyunsaturated fatty acids compared with conventional milk. The lower beneficial fatty acid levels in conventional milk is indicative of a diet low in fresh grass, and some conventional products even showed evidence of the cows being supplemented with a saturated fat product derived from palm oil.

Gillian Butler, the lead researcher from Newcastle University who published her study’s findings in the Journal of Dairy Science (January 2011), puts the differences down to a lower reliance on grazing and fertilizer suppressing clover on conventional farms during poor weather seasons. “The results suggest greater uniformity of feeding practice on farms supplying organic milk since there were no brands which differed consistently in fat composition,” she said. “This implies a fairly uniform approach to feeding practised across these suppliers.”

Organic dairy farms typically rely more on forage, especially grazing in pastures that aren’t supplemented with nitrogen fertilizer. Because of this, red and white clover tends to grow abundantly on organic farms, which have been shown to increase the beneficial fatty acids in milk. According to Butler’s findings, because of the organic dairy’s practices, their milk product tends to have higher levels of nutritional fatty acids regardless of the time of year or weather conditions, whereas the quality of the conventional dairy farms’ product tends to be variable depending on the climate for each season.

Emma Hockridge, head of policy at the Soil Association, said: “This groundbreaking research proves for the first time that people buying organic milk will be benefiting from the higher levels of beneficial fatty acids in organic milk through the whole year.”

Possibility of higher food costs in 2011

Several factors from the past year are coming in to play to possibly push food prices to uncomfortable levels.

• Of greatest concern is the cost of energy, which directly influences the cost of food – and energy prices continue to increase. U.S. gas prices in 2010 rose 18 percent, ending at more than $3 per gallon. And some industry experts see gas hitting the $5 mark by 2012.
• The production of biofuels also competes for the world’s supply of crops. One third of the U.S.’s maize crops went to ethanol production in 2010.
• Food reserves are tight in many parts of the world.
• Due to severe drought in 2010, wheat production was cut back by one third in the Black Sea region of Russia, a major source of wheat for Asia’s population. Due to the reduced harvesting, Russia banned exporting of wheat, which jittered the markets and made prices climb.
• A drought may be looming in South America, a large exporter of the world’s food supply.

Shenggen Fan, head of the International Food Policy Research Institute, recommends countries invest in making their farmers more productive to be able to better withstand harsh circumstances and meet growing demand. “I think we really need to take some urgent actions,”  he says. “If we don’t, I guarantee you we will have another crisis.”