Pigs not to blame for MRSA

By Laurie Johns

Despite her $18 million a year salary, Katie Couric of CBS Evening News has proved talk is cheap when it comes to her recent story on antibiotic resistance in humans and livestock farming.

Couric's Feb. 9 story cited a handful of experts who blamed livestock farmers for increased cases of antibiotic resistance in humans. Specifically, they claim the antibiotics given to animals are responsible for increased incidents of people getting Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections.

But doctors who specialize in treating MRSA cases say their experience and science shows the responsibility can be found in the mirror, not the hog lots of Iowa.

Dr. Lisa Veach, infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist at Iowa Health of Des Moines, has treated thousands of MRSA cases. Veach always asks lots of questions to uncover more about the source of their MRSA infection.

But Veach says she has never asked MRSA patients if they work at a livestock farm. Why? Because MRSA (which she calls staphylococcus) is a “people bug.” It comes from people, not livestock. What's more; it's everywhere.

“Many people carry staphylococcus at one time or another,” she told me. “If you cultured 100 people to see if they carried staphylococcus, 30 of them would in fact at that time carry it on their body. But most that carry it don't come down with an infection, unless their skin is compromised. A cut or a scrape is certainly the most common route by which staph goes from the outside of our body to deeper in the tissues.”

Clearly, we have to ask ourselves how we can help stop the spread of MRSA. How many times have you taken your child to the pediatrician for a sore throat or ear infection and, without a blood test or throat culture, walked out with an antibiotic?

A study recently published by the American Academy of Pediatrics says maybe you should “wait it out” because chances are good your child will recover on their own. Check out that study at http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/296/10/1235.

Let the anti-meat zealots wag their fingers at livestock farmers and make unfounded accusations, but when it comes to MRSA, one of the state top experts on the subject says it's the person, not the pig, that's to blame.

Veach says it's really this simple: Take antibiotics only if tests prove you need them. Finish them when they're prescribed. Cover a cut or a scrape if you have one. Wash your hands, a lot. Simple stuff.

And it doesn't take a TV celebrity with an $18-million-a-year salary to figure it out.

Laurie Johns is Public Relations Manager for the Iowa Farm Bureau.

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