EPA Approves Treating Orange Groves With Antibiotics

[douglas9]

Move Could Reduce the Effectiveness of Drugs Used to Combat Human Diseases
The Trump EPA recently approved spraying orange groves with an antibiotic used to treat a common sexually-transmitted disease. The move increases the risk that the antibiotic, oxytetracycline, might eventually not work to treat chlamydia and other human diseases.

People have until Feb. 4 to request hearings or raise objections about residue from this antibiotic on oranges and other citrus fruits.

“Researchers have been telling us for decades to curb the use of antibiotics in agriculture or risk losing them forever,” said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity. “The Trump administration has chosen to ignore the science and blindly sprint down a path that could dead-end at bacterial resistance.”

Oxytetracycline and similar antibiotics work by interfering with the ability of bacteria to grow and multiply. Florida orange growers have used the drug and another antibiotic, streptomycin, on an emergency basis against citrus greening, a disease with no cure that stunts the growth of oranges.

https://www.dcreport.org/2019/01/17/epa-approves-treating-orange-groves-with-antibiotics/

[GemDigger]

1. kick

[Claritie Pixie]

2. WTF. I hate them all.

[csziggy]

3. As someone who has owned orange groves

I am glad there is some hope of fighting citrus greening. Without some method of stopping the disease, citrus in Florida will be eliminated - faster than by development and climate changed that has decimated citrus north of I-4.

But as someone who bred horses for decades and knows the abuse of antibiotics and how that has led to antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria, I worry about the actual use by citrus growers. In livestock they put antibiotics in feed because it was claimed to increase growth in young livestock (I never raised chicken, cattle, or hogs so I don't know the truth of that claim and I don't know if that practice is still in effect) but that just spread the indiscriminate use much wider than giving it as needed for diagnosed illnesses.

I don't see how citrus growers can apply antibiotics without indiscriminately into the general environment. The soil that Florida citrus trees are grown in is very sandy and nutrients have to be added regularly, often through irrigation systems. This already leads to problems such as leaching of nutrients into the ground water which pollutes the waterways. I can see how the same watering systems might be used to spray antibiotics and let those substances increase the types of pollution.

All that said, my family is getting out of the citrus business. Last year the family sold the grove my grandfather planted on land he bought in the original 1928 Florida Land Bust and we are negotiating to sell our remaining grove. We'd had discussions with the grove managers to rip out the groves and plant blueberries if the greening came close but none of the remaining family members want to be in the fruit business so we're getting out now.

[MineralMan]

4. It's becoming endemic in California, as well.

My parents own a smallish orange/avocado farm. It has become economically infeasible to operate it now. It will go up for sale soon, since my parents are 94 years old and nobody in the family is interested in a money-losing operation.

It will be bought, no doubt, by someone who is interested in living on 16 acres in a beautiful valley. It could be custom-farmed and generally would break even on an annual basis, but more likely, the citrus would be ripped out and it would turn into a horsey place by the new owners. That's what has happened to other such farms in the area.

Oh, well...after over 50 years, it will have a new owner, who can do with the property whatever they wish.

[csziggy]

5. Yeah, after my Dad passed away at 90 we started wanting to sell

But my sister (who in charge of everything) was too busy taking care of Mom until last September when Mom passed at 97.

Most of the former orange groves in Florida become housing development. The people who bought our old grove are interested in keeping it as a grove and I wish them the best. But I am glad to be out of it.

Our horsey place was a semi-abandoned pig farm when we bought it forty years ago so our clean up improved the neighborhood. I'm making plans for what will happen when I die. I have no children and the only nieces or nephews I have that might want ownership would only get it to sell it for houses. I have other plans...

[Hekate]

6. Oh FFS