The politics of meat safety

Last year, a study found that 47 percent of meat at U.S. supermarkets contains the pathogen Staphylococcus aureus—and that 52 percent of these bacteria are resistant to antibiotics. This resistance stems from the practice of giving healthy livestock daily doses of penicillin and tetracycline. It's cheaper to prevent disease by lacing animals' feed with antibiotics than by providing adequate space and sanitation; the drugs also make the animals grow faster. Eighty percent of the nation's antibiotics are consumed by this highly profitable industry.

The fact that the U.S. has a national meat industry—as opposed to regional systems of production and distribution—makes it harder to confine an outbreak and identify its source. And germs resistant to antibiotics are especially perilous. That's why the European Union moved in 2005 to ban the feeding of penicillin and tetracycline to healthy livestock, a practice the American Medical Association and other groups have long opposed. As for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, it announced plans for a similar ban in 1977, but the political clout of the meat industry has prevented it from acting.

Recently the FDA announced its decision to quit trying. Instead, it will rely on voluntary standards. The agency released this information in the standard fashion of announcing news the government isn't proud of: a small item was published in the Federal Register three days before Christmas. While the voluntary standards are still in draft form, industry groups have already come out against them.