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And then the antibiotic-resistant staph learned to jump back into humans.

"It's like watching the birth of a superbu

whole-genome analysis on a staph strain called CC398 and 88 closely related variations.

emerged within the past decade in pigs and has since spread widely in cattle and poultry as well as pigs.

the animal bacterium jumped back into humans with close exposure to livestock.

This "pig MRSA" has been detected in nearly half of all meat sampled in U.S. commerce

we think it may be changing gears, so to speak, and gaining the capacity to be passed from person to person.

Price says the new data provide an early warning of what might become a major public health problem.

in some areas of the Netherlands, it's causing as many as 1 in 4 human MRSA cases

"our inappropriate use of antibiotics ... is now coming back to haunt us."

the solution is clear — banning antibiotics in livestock feed, as the European Union has done.

Most antibiotics sold in the U.S. go to animals, mostly in their feed, where they act as a growth promoter and damp down infection outbreaks in large feedlots.

It said it would focus instead on "voluntary reform" by the meat industry to limit use.

According to the bill's own sponsor, this was introduced to protect the economic interests of the egg industry," said Miller. "The American public overwhelmingly supports the banning of egg factory cages, not measures such as this which would ban the outlawing of cages.  Such moves clearly subvert the will of the people."

Responded Humane Farming Association founder Brad Miller, “It is simply delusional to think that getting humane organizations into the business of promoting meat from heritage breed chickens will result in even the slightest reduction of animal suffering. The ASPCA decision to fund the commercial production of chickens for meat raises a number of troubling issues,” Miller continued. “Beyond the obvious ethical issues from the animals’ standpoint, there is also the matter of using charitable dollars to further the commercial interests of a privately owned, profit-driven poultry company. This is just the latest,” Miller charged, “in a growing trend on the part of several major animal organizations to, in effect, merge with the livestock industry.” Miller noted that Farm Forward has previously promoted a variety of federal and state legislation that HFA regarded as more likely to entrench the status quo in animal agriculture than to bring about meaningful change.

“A commercial animal production operation is not an alternative to factory farming, but an extension of it. In this instance, chickens and turkeys are being mass-produced in mechanical hatchery incubators, raised motherless for human consumption by the thousands, and slaughtered, i.e., factory farmed.

“In addition to cruelty and commodification of animals being falsely represented as ‘humane,’ ‘compassionate,’ ‘anti-factory farming,’ etcetera,” Davis added, “is that these relatively smaller farms seek to grow and expand. Regardless of what size they are, they do not reduce the amount of resources needed to raise and slaughter animals

“It is unethical for an ‘animal welfare’ organization,” Davis concluded, “to suggest to the public that millions and billions of people can continue to eat the same number of animals, as long as these animals are raised ‘humanely’ on non-factory farms. Humans will never set aside hundreds of millions or billions of acres of land to accommodate billions of animals living ‘free range,’ yet this is the false prospect being offered to a public that wants to believe that incompatible desires and realities can be reconciled.”

If you think it is wrong for the ASPCA to use charitable donations to fund and promote poultry slaughter, expand poultry breeding and hatchery facilities and pretend that a factory farm is Not a factory farm, while doing NOTHING to promote genuine compassion and respect for these birds,