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USDA said last week it would begin allowing imports of fruits and vegetables treated by irradiation, a technology used to kill bacteria and lengthen shelf life. Irradiation, which has been endorsed by the World Health Organization, exposes food to low doses of electrons or gamma rays to destroy deadly organisms such as E. coli O157:H7 and salmonella. It has been approved by U.S. regulators for use with raw chicken and beef as well as spices and dried seasonings.

Some green groups and environmentalists fear using high-energy radiation in food products could have harmful side effects for consumers.

With USDA’s new rule, importers have one more alternative to protect produce from fruit flies and the mango seed weevil. Other choices include fumigation and cold treatment. “The irradiation alternative allows importers to sell riper, more valuable fruit, with less damage,” the USDA said. Irradiation would most likely boost imports of exotic fruits and vegetables, such as papaya, that need to be treated for fruit flies, it added.

Anna Cherry, spokeswoman for USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, said the irradiation rule became effective October 23 when it was published in the Federal Register.

I. INTRODUCTION

Just outside of Ruili, a Chinese border town in southwestern Yunnan Province known as a haven for prostitution, drug trafficking, and “as close to an HIV laboratory as one can find in Asia,”2 a factory farms Asiatic brown bears and sun bears for their bile.3 Hundreds of bears, surgically implanted with tubes and valves for the extraction of bile used for traditional Chinese medicine, are kept in “milking cages” measuring little more than one cubic meter.4 Some bears “gnawed at their paws to relieve the pain,” while others had their teeth and claws sawed off to protect their handlers.5 Although the Chinese government reportedly has banned the collection of bile from live bears,6 undercover reporters from China Central Television (CCTV) discovered the illegal farms engaged in business as usual.7 In addition, the London-based World Society for the Protection of Animals conducted an investigation of bear farms in China in 1999 and 2000, many of which are state-run.8

Those who oppose the farming of bears for their bile are motivated solely by a concern for the animals’ well-being. However, there are many more reasons beyond animal welfare to be concerned about the intensive farming of animals for food. Unlike an animal in a small-scale or family farm, who contributes to the ecological well-being of the farm, an animal in a factory farm is only a unit of production in a process that externalizes significant costs, which are not reflected in the price of the meat. Factory farming creates staggering amounts of animal excrement, many times more than human excrement, which pollutes the waterways without the benefit of adequate waste treatment.13 Comparatively, on small-scale farms, animal waste can be used to replenish the soil for crop production. Also, in the United States, raising animals for food consumes a third of the nation’s energy and half of all water used.14 Apart from the environmental costs, intensive farming of animals has enormous health costs, not only for those who must work in the slaughterhouses at the front end of the process, but also for the consumer who ingests the meat at the end of the process.15

Your puppy gets sick in the middle of the night, so you drive him to the animal hospital and carry him in. But the first medical professional you see probably isn’t a veterinarian. A veterinary technician takes your puppy’s history, asking you for a description of the animal’s symptoms. He or she will take your puppy’s vital statistics, including blood pressure and temperature, and decide how urgent the case is. If your puppy has trouble breathing, the veterinary technician can give CPR or an intubation and call for a veterinarian. You can relax, though: with a veterinary technician providing care, your puppy is in good hands.

Veterinary technicians are often called animal nurses because they care for animal patients the way nurses care for humans. But veterinary technicians’ responsibilities extend beyond nursing, combining duties of many human healthcare jobs. In addition to providing general nursing, technicians help to administer and monitor anesthesia just as surgical nurses do, take x rays and sonograms like radiologic technicians, clean teeth like dental technicians, provide rehabilitation like physical therapy aides, monitor surgical equipment like surgical technicians, and conduct laboratory tests like clinical laboratory technicians.

Many people are attracted to veterinary technology because they love animals–and that’s a good foundation for a veterinary career. But veterinary technicians also need solid scientific skills. As veterinary medicine becomes more advanced, the duties of technicians are becoming more complex and varied.

Cardiac arrhythmias are of different types based on their mechanism and origin. The information gathered from animal studies has been instrumental in devising diagnostic and therapeutic strategies; so different animal models are needed for different types of arrhythmias. The origin and mechanism underlying clinical arrhythmias are of considerable significance, since knowledge of these processes may provide a basis for successful therapy. Various animal models that encompass different types of arrhythmias are reviewed. This review classifies various experimental models according to their origin, which are mainly supraventricular and ventricular. Also included are various transgenic animal models for arrhythmias.

Despite earlier indications the White House planned to move the entire Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) from USDA to a Homeland Security Department, administration officials this week retreated to a scaled-back version of the move. Testifying before the House Select Committee on Homeland Security and again before the Senate Agriculture Committee, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said she continues to support the president’s proposal to create the new department, adding that “Including parts of the USDA in the proposal is a clear recognition of USDA’s vital mission as it relates to homeland security.”

Veneman said the House Agriculture Committee worked closely with the administration “to refine the president’s proposal” that would move specialized border inspection and enforcement functions of USDA, as well as the Plum Island Disease Facility, to the new department. She called the Ag Committee’s proposal “consistent with the president’s goal of unifying the border and transportation security functions of many federal agencies.”

Under the revised proposal regarding APHIS, some of the programs that would remain at USDA include those aimed at protecting livestock from predators; eradicating boll weevil, fruit flies, and brucellosis; controlling rabies in wildlife; and negotiating with foreign countries on technical requirements for U.S. exports and imports, biotechnology, and animal welfare.

On February 21, 2006, the Pennsylvania Department of Health (PDOH) reported to CDC and the New York City (NYC) Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) a case of inhalation anthrax in a man who resided in New York City. This report summarizes the joint epidemiologic and environmental investigation conducted by local, state, and federal public health, animal health, and law enforcement authorities in Pennsylvania and NYC to determine the source of exposure and identify other persons who were potentially at risk.

On February 16, the patient had traveled from NYC to northern Pennsylvania for a performance with his dance troupe. He collapsed later that evening with rigors and was admitted to a local hospital, where he reported a 3-day history of shortness of breath, dry cough, and malaise. A chest radiograph revealed bilateral infiltrates and pleural effusions.

On February 17, the patient was transferred to a tertiary care center because of worsening respiratory status. All four blood culture bottles grew gram-positive rods. Isolates were sent to the PDOH laboratory and confirmed on February 21 as Bacillus anthracis by polymerase chain reaction and susceptibility to lysis by gamma phage. On February 22, CDC identified the isolate as B. anthracis genotype 1 by multiple-locus variable-number tandem repeat analysis (1). Isolates were susceptible to all antimicrobials tested. Preliminary anti-protective antigen (PA) antibody testing by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay was below the lower limit of quantification of the assay (2), consistent with early infection. Anti-PA IgG was detectable in the patient’s plasma on February 22 and reached a four-fold elevation above the assay reactivity threshold by February 23, thus confirming seroconversion. As of March 14, the patient remained hospitalized in Pennsylvania.

Children differ from adults both physiologically and behaviorally. These differences can affect how and when exposures to xenobiotics occur and the resulting responses. Testing using animal models may be used to predict whether children display novel toxicities not observed in adults or whether children are more or less sensitive to known toxicities. Historically, evaluation of developmental toxicity has focused on gestational exposures and morphological changes resulting from this exposure. Functional consequences of gestational exposure and postnatal exposure have not been as well studied. Difficulties with postnatal toxicity evaluations include divergent differentiation of structure, function and physiology across species, lack of understanding of species differences in functional ontogeny, and lack of common end points and milestones across species. Key words: critical periods of development, extrapolation of animal data, hazard identification, regulatory guidelines. Environ Health Perspect 112:266-271 (2004). doi:10.1289/ehp.6014 available via http://dx.doi.org/[Online 25 November 2003]

Children and adults are different physiologically and behaviorally. Children eat and drink more (based on size), play and act differently (e.g., very young children engage in more hand-to-mouth activity), are still undergoing development, and may be less or more able to metabolize and excrete certain substances [reviewed by U.S. EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) (2001)]. Because of these differences, children and adults may differ qualitatively and/or quantitatively in how they are affected by xenobiotic exposure. Effects of xenobiotics in children may be completely different from effects from the same exposure in adults (qualitative difference). On the other hand, the effect of xenobiotic exposure may be similar between children and adults but may occur to a greater or lesser extent in the child (quantitative difference).

A study by Canadian feed inspectors has found bone fragments and other animal material in samples of vegetable-based feed, but health officials say that new rules should prevent future problems. Interim results from the study, obtained by The Vancouver Sun through freedom of information laws, found 41 out of 70 feed samples contained animal materials that were not identified on their labels. The program tested 110 samples in total, but Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) official Sergio Tolusso said he did not know how many contained animal protein. Some of the materials found were hairs, feathers, bone and muscle fragments, blood and milk, Tolusso said.

The tests can distinguish between poultry and mammalian materials, but are not detailed enough to tell whether the material was from cattle, hogs or other mammals, Tolusso said. Cattle feed is allowed to contain protein made from hogs and poultry, while pig and poultry feed can contain any animal protein.

The small study was done as a field trial of a program to test how well feed companies and their suppliers comply with a 1997 ban on feeding protein made from cattle and other ruminant livestock back to cattle, a ban designed to prevent the spread of BSE. Tolusso said the findings should not concern consumers, because Canada has a very low level of mad cow disease. “The feed ban that we have had in place, even if it had some potential design flaws, it has been effective in preventing the disease from spreading,” he said.

Permit conditions will be tightened for companies that wish to field-test experimental genetically modified plants designed to produce pharmaceutical or industrial compounds in the 2003 growing season, the Agriculture Department announced March 6.

USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service issued the permit condition revisions, which were made available to the public March 7 and was be published in the Federal Register March 10, in order to ensure that these genetically modified plants do not contaminate the nation’s food supply or the environment.

In addition to tightening the permit conditions, APHIS also plans to require a single permitting process for genetically modified plants that produce industrial compounds, and for plants that produce pharmaceutical compounds, APHIS spokesman Jim Rogers said.

Under current USDA requirements, an APHIS permit must be obtained before any experimental genetically engineered pharmaceutical-producing plants may be grown outside, Rogers said. Plants designed to produce industrial compounds, however, may instead go through a separate notification process.

APHIS plans “to publish an interim final rule that will require a permit for the field testing of industrials for the 2003 growing season,” according to the APHIS statement. “Until the rule is published, APHIS will strongly encourage applicants to request a permit for field testing industrials.”

APHIS is strengthening its permit conditions by:

* Specifying that open-pollinating experimental corn designed to produce pharmaceutical or industrial compounds may not be grown within one mile of other open-pollinating corn crops;

* Specifying that pollination-controlled experimental corn may be grown no less than one-half mile from open-pollinating corn crops, and that the surrounding corn must be planted 28 days before or after the experimental crop;

* Doubling the size of a fallow zone around test sites to 50 feet to avoid the potential mixing of plant materials caused by equipment activities around the test site;

* Restricting the production of food or feed crops on the test site or in the surrounding fallow zone in the year after an experimental crop has been grown;

* Requiring farm equipment such as harvesters and planters be dedicated to pharmaceutical production only, as opposed to simply requiring them to be cleaned;

* Requiring dedicated storage facilities for the regulated crops and for the farm equipment used on the test site;

Giving antibiotics to farm animals results in the emergence of resistant bacteria with potentially calamitous consequences for human health, warns a report from the United Kingdom Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food.

The committee, which was set up to provide the government with independent expert advice, says that it is clear that some of the resistant strains seen in food animals are capable of infecting humans. Moreover, the ability of micro-organisms to transfer resistance “adds to the concerns about multiple resistant strains like [Salmonella typhimurium] entering the food chain.”

The report recommends reduced reliance on the use of antimicrobials in food animal production and urges regulatory authorities to consider the resistance problem before authorising veterinary medicines.

Members of the committee backed the recent European Union ban on using as growth promoters certain antibiotics that are closely related to those used in human medicine. The report stated: “Having considered the matter very carefully, we concluded it would be prudent to phase out the use as growth promoters of spiramycin, tylosin phosphate and virginiamycin which might give rise to resistance to clinical antibiotics. We felt, additionally, that those remaining for use as growth promoters–avilamycin, bambermycin, bacitracin zinc, monensin sodium and salinomycin–should be more closely controlled, with regular reviews of possible implications in human medicine.”

Although the report says that there is conclusive evidence that giving antibiotics to animals results in the emergence of some resistant bacteria that infect humans, it points out that the extent to which this contributes to the overall problem of bacterial antibiotic resistance in humans is uncertain. It notes: “For more than a year we have tried, unsuccessfully, to discover the amounts of antibiotics used in animals in the United Kingdom, the species of animals in which they were given, and the purpose of administration. We recognise that much of this information is commercially sensitive or difficult to assemble. We nevertheless believe that a robust system to gather this information should be put in place as soon as possible.”