Nando’s and Asda chicken: Birds ‘stepped on and left convulsing and wounded in scenes of suffering and cannibalism’

Workers given extra training after secret cameras record ‘harrowing shots of painful abuse’

Workers on chicken farms supplying Nando’s, Asda and Lidl have been filmed leaving a bird convulsing after breaking its neck, stepping on the animals necks and throwing sick ones onto piles, footage from an animal rights group shows.

In grisly video taken by secret cameras, dead birds appeared to be left among the living, leading to cannibalism, while workers stepped on and kicked flocks in sheds.

Some suffered red, raw skin from feather loss and many were collapsed under their own weight, another video showed.

The “harrowing scenes of painful abuse” were shot in two separate investigations at farms run by one of the UK’s largest food businesses and endorsed by the Red Tractor scheme.

The company supplies the supermarkets and Nando’s restaurants with whole chickens and chicken products including ready meals and sliced meat.

Dozens of birds are seen in the film collapsed under the weight of their bodies, many flapping frantically in a desperate attempt to lift themselves up. The RSPCA said the condition results from chickens being selectively bred to put on weight unnaturally rapidly.

The videos appearing to show the workers kicking and stepping on birds were shot by animal-protection group Animal Equality in Northamptonshire between January and March after a tip-off about poor conditions.

The group said that after finding bin bags full of dead birds at one farm, the investigators installed a hidden camera.

The footage seems to show workers not only leaving dead or dying chickens convulsing, but also throwing any live ones unfit for the slaughterhouse onto a pile, where they were apparently left suffering for hours, unable to stand up, frantically flapping, the organisation said.

Weeks later, investigators from another group, Surge, said they saw birds with injuries, leg deformities and unnaturally large bodies, and numerous dead birds that appeared to have been left for longer than a day.

“There are also signs of injury, with one showing a large wound,” a spokesman said.

This chick was ‘gasping for breath’ as a result of being bred to grow too rapidly (Animal Equality)

The farms, Evenley, Pimlico and Helmdon, all rear chickens for Avara Foods, which says it is the UK’s sole supplier of chicken, turkey and duck, producing 4.5 million a week.

Animal Equality’s UK director, Toni Vernelli, said: “Headlines about American chlorinated chicken would have us believe British birds live a life of luxury but these harrowing scenes reveal the truth.

“Bred to grow so unnaturally large that their joints and hearts can’t cope, chickens on British farms suffer every minute of their lives.”

The group passed the footage to the RSPCA, Red Tractor and the government’s Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA).

Animal health and welfare is at the heart of Red Tractor standards
Red Tractor spokeswoman
Red Tractor labels require that operators check sheds at least once a day and remove any dead animals as soon as possible.

Dr Vernelli said chickens seen convulsing were likely to be dead but it was not certain, and the convulsions would have alarmed the flock. Breaking birds’ necks is a recommended way to kill any that are sick before going for slaughter, but she said birds that were lame and suffering should have been put out of their misery earlier.

In December The Independent revealed crippled turkeys were found at a factory farm in Lincolnshire supplying Asda, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s, run by the Faccenda Group, part of Avara.

Research from the RSPCA says supermarkets actively encourage consumers to buy chickens that have suffered in industrial-style systems.

A Red Tractor spokeswoman said: “Animal health and welfare is at the heart of Red Tractor standards.  As soon as we were made aware of alleged breaches to our standards, we launched an immediate, independent investigation.

“Red Tractor has conducted on-farm spot-checks. The Animal and Plant Health Agency also inspected the farms and no major issues were found. 

Our members take their responsibilities to animal welfare very seriously
British Retail Consortium
“The footage highlighted some issues in terms of Red Tractor standards and we required all personnel involved with the three farms to undergo additional training including the prompt identification of sick birds, bird euthanasia and behaviour around catching. This training has now been completed and verified by a vet.

“The farms are now subject to a strict programme of unannounced inspections.”

Avara Foods gave The Independent a statement saying: “We take our responsibilities for the birds in our care very seriously, and their health and welfare is of the utmost importance.

Many birds were ‘suffering from lameness’ (Animal Equality)

“We have closely examined the contents of this report to assess compliance against our procedures. Initial findings indicate that, for the farm involved, our requirement to remove any culled or fallen birds as soon as they are identified has not been followed.

“We will take all necessary action to ensure that this situation does not recur. Anyone found not meeting our standards will be subjected to comprehensive retraining and further steps taken if appropriate.”

A Nando’s spokesperson said: “We expect all our suppliers to operate to high standards and we are disappointed. We will be working closely with the supplier to get to the bottom of these allegations, ensuring immediate actions are taken to bring all their sites up to standard.”

Lidl referred to a British Retail Consortium statement that said: “Our members take their responsibilities to animal welfare very seriously.

“Any breaches to animal welfare are totally unacceptable and should be investigated immediately, with swift action taken to rectify any issues.”

We expect high standards and are disappointed
Nando’s
An Asda spokesman said: “We take animal welfare extremely seriously and are investigating with our suppliers,” and referred to the BRC statement.

A spokesperson for the RSPCA, which has prosecution powers, said: “We shared the concerns raised about welfare and our inspectors visited. There were problems with some of the birds’ legs in the footage but staff produced evidence that they had been under the care of a vet and had been receiving appropriate treatment.

“However, we have real concerns about the realities of intensive farming practices which see fast-growing birds bred to provide maximum meat in a short space of time, which can cause severe health problems and lead to suffering.”

An APHA spokesperson said: The local authority, as the appropriate enforcement agency, may initiate prosecution action for welfare offences. We do not comment on individual cases.

(Source: Independent)

Study finds multi-drug resistant bacteria in chicken meat, eggs

The researchers said excessive use of antibiotics in animal feed is a major reason for such the resistance, making it difficult to treat infections.

A new study found that samples of chicken liver meat and eggs from 12 locations in Mumbai had ‘multi antibiotic resistant’ bacteria.

The samples were tested for their resistance or susceptibility to 12 major antibiotics. One of the bacterial isolates was in fact found resistant to all the antibiotics.

“Excessive use of antibiotics in animal feed is one of the prime reasons for such antibiotic resistance,” said Vikas Jha, one of the authors of the study, to Down to Earth.

A bacteria is considered ‘multi-drug resistant’ when it is resistant to antibiotics of at least three classes. Because of the bacteria’s resistance, a human infected with it cannot be treated easily.

The researchers isolated the Salmonella bacterium – which causes food poisoning – from the samples. This isolated bacterium’s interaction with 12 antibiotics which treat infections in humans such as amoxicillin, azithromycin, ciprofloxacin, ceftriaxone, chloramphenicol, erythromycin, gentamicin, levofloxacin, nitrofurantoin and tetracycline was tested.

Resistance to azithromycin, erythromycin, nitrofurantoin and trimethoprim was the highest, with nearly all samples being resistant to these antibiotics. Over 60% of the samples were also resistant to tetracycline, gentamicin, chloramphenicol and amoxillin.

The study, published in the journal Acta Scientific Microbiology, was authored by researchers at the National Facility for Biopharmaceuticals, St Johns College of Humanities and Sciences and VES College of Pharmacy.
In 2017, the Centre for Science and Environment’s report found a high level of multi-drug resistance in bacteria such as E. coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Staphylococcus lentus, in and around poultry farms. They took samples from four key poultry producing states in north India – UP, Haryana, Rajasthan and Punjab.

These three bacteria were tested for their resistance to 16 antibiotics. Ten of these antibiotics are considered ‘critically important’ for humans, by the World Health Organisation.

“We first wanted to understand the extent of antibiotic resistance in the poultry environment, and then establish if the resistance bacteria is moving out of the poultry farms into the environment through waste disposal,” said Chandra Bhushan, deputy director of the CSE, about the study.

The study said misuse of antibiotics in poultry farms is leading to multi-drug resistant bacteria. The bacteria seeps into the environment through litter from these farms.

According to their study, 100 % of E. coli, 92% Klebsiella pneumoniae and 78% Staphylococcus lentus isolated from the poultry environment were multi-drug resistant. Some of these bacteria were resistant to antibiotics which are very critical to humans such as penicillins and fluoroquinolones.

(Source: The Wire)

Food safety expert explains why US poultry is banned in the EU

Washing chickens in chlorine isn't actually deemed dangerous – it's what comes with it that's the problem

With Brexit on the horizon, the UK is now looking for ways to open up trade with countries outside the EU. A trade deal with the US is one of the most significant options politicians are exploring and an agreement that would increase imports and exports of food and drink could be an important component of this. This has raised the possibility of the UK accepting US food standards, and a prominent example of this is the use of chlorine to wash chicken carcasses. This is currently banned in the EU.

Why are chickens washed with chlorine in the US?
It all comes down to money and efficiency of space. The majority of farmers do care about rearing their birds, but as profit margins can be very tight, animal welfare is sidelined to keep costs down. In the EU, cost is also important, but the law means it can’t come at the expense of the birds’ basic welfare. There is a legal minimum amount of space, lighting and ventilation for EU poultry-rearing houses.

The more space the birds have to move around in, the fewer can be housed in a single area, which in turn has an effect on production costs. As there are no laws governing this in the US, the birds can be crammed in tightly so they have limited movement, with little light or ventilation. This reduces production costs but increases the risks of disease and contamination in a flock.

Washing the chickens in a strong chlorine solution (20-50 parts per million of chlorine) provides a brash, cost-effective method of killing any microorganisms on the surface of the bird, particularly bacteria such as species of Salmonella and Campylobacter. This helps prevent the meat being contaminated with microbes during slaughter and evisceration.

Why is the process banned in the EU?
US chicken has been banned in the EU since 1997 because of this chlorine-washing process. But this isn’t because the treatment itself has been deemed dangerous. A report by the EU Scientific Committee on Veterinary Measures, for example, highlighted that the chemical cleaning treatment can be effective at removing food-borne pathogens depending on how it is used. The real fear is that heavily soiled birds may not be sufficiently disinfected, and that relying on chlorine washing could lead to poorer hygiene standards overall.

EU officials believe the food industry should be continually improving hygiene standards in all steps of processing – the “farm to fork” principle, and so have banned chickens washed in chlorine as a deterrent to poor practices. But in the US there are no poultry welfare standards so the process is common. There have also been reports, including undercover video evidence by the Humane Society of the United States, of both inhumane and unsanitary practices being carried out within poultry houses due to a lack of animal welfare regulation.

What are the potential health risks of chlorine washing?
Although there are some benefits to this chlorine washing, there are concerns about it. Some US abattoirs and processing plants rely heavily on chlorination because their other hygiene standards are so poor that they would be illegal in Europe. The process is also very good at removing odours and surface slime, meaning the meat can be passed off as fresh for much longer than it should be.

Chlorine isn’t toxic at the levels used in the washing process and doesn’t itself cause cancer. But studies have shown that the treatment can cause carcinogens such as semicarbazide and trihalomethanes to form in the poultry meat if the concentration of chlorine is high enough. The US Food Safety and Inspection Service does set limits to prevent this but there is always a risk they could be violated.

(Source: Independent)

There's no such thing as humane meat or eggs. Stop kidding yourself

Many people think they consume humane meat, but only a tiny fraction actually do. The majority of consumers are totally wrong about what they eat

A few years ago I wanted to visit the best egg farm I could find. I had been inside an egg factory farm. I had seen a dozen sheds, each with a dozen rows of wire cages stacked two high and 150ft deep. Those cages were so small the birds inside couldn’t even spread their wings. They were half-starved, diseased, and undeniably miserable.

Factory farming was clearly wrong, so I wanted to instead find a farm that represented an ethical and humane way to raise animals for food.

Fortunately some small farms, such as those who set up stands at farmers’ markets, are willing to let people visit their facilities. So in March 2016, I drove from my home in San Francisco up California’s northern coast, through towering redwoods and past crashing waves, to one of the best egg farms in the state.

The award-winning farm was nestled in a landscape of bucolic green grass and rolling hills. It looked like it came straight out of an advertisement. I saw a charmingly rundown-yet-functional mobile chicken coop standing in a football-field-sized pasture peppered with free-roaming chickens. I thought to myself, why couldn’t all farms be like this? I had seen what happened behind the locked doors of factory farms, but here I seemed to be witnessing a better way. I would soon learn just how wrong I was.

Americans care about farmed animal welfare. In fact, last week California passed a ballot measure for cage-free eggs with 61% of the vote, a rare level of agreement in these divided times. In 2016, a similar initiative in Massachusetts succeeded with 78%.

Consumers go out of their way to buy cage-free or pasture-based eggs or buy meat at the local farmers’ market. My colleagues and I ran a survey in 2017 that showed that 75% of US adults believe they usually eat meat, dairy, and eggs “from animals that are treated humanely.” In fact, when vegans ask their friends to stop eating animals, one of the most common responses they hear is, “Don’t worry. I only eat humane meat.”

Battery chickens. Photograph: Fred Tanneau/AFP/Getty Images

Are consumers right? It’s impossible for all of them to be. Data on the number of animals per farm in the US suggests that over 99% of US farmed animals live on Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, commonly known as “factory farms”. Globally, that figure is probably over 90%.

So 75% of Americans think they consume humane meat, but a tiny fraction actually do. The majority of consumers seem tragically wrong about what they eat.

Take cage-free eggs, for example. Just because the birds aren’t in cages doesn’t mean they’re healthy or happy. Cage-free birds have around the same total space per bird; they just live in a large shed with thousands of other birds.

In this stressful environment, birds frequently peck each other so much that they lose feathers, bleed, and even die from what is effectively cannibalism caused by the birds’ high-density confinement. The air quality on cage-free farms tends to be worse as chickens walking around kick up dust and feces, which threatens food safety.

Raising chickens on pasture avoids some of these issues, but it invites new problems. Pasture-based flocks suffer due to predation and disease from wild animals.

By some measures grass-fed cow farming is potentially worse than grain-fed cow farming. Grass-fed cow farming leads to two to four times more production of methane, a major greenhouse gas, than grain-fed cow farming. It also takes more land, water, and fossil fuels to produce grass-fed beef. Buying “grass-fed” or “pasture-raised” can be seen as a salve for the environmental conscience, but the damage can actually be greater.

Maybe there are some rotational, labor-intensive methods that do reduce environmental impact. However, eco-conscious animal farming does little to mitigate health concerns aside from the overuse of antibiotics. And the animal suffering, especially on chicken farms, is still staggering.

You may be thinking that even if the vast majority of farms still have serious issues, surely at least a few farms have happy animals.

This response is valid, to an extent. Where I grew up in rural Texas, I lived around pasture-raised cattle who seemed perfectly content to chew their cud. I helped raise a handful chickens and goats myself. Yes, their slaughter might be a terrible experience, but it seems plausible that one day of even suffering might not outweigh a few years of happy cud-chewing life.

Pigs are seen in a factory farm December 2003 in northern Missouri. The pigs are never let out from their confined spaces until they are taken to slaughter. Photograph: Daniel Pepper/Getty Images

When people call upon the idea of ethical animal farming – even if that constitutes little or none of their actual consumption – it has dangerous effects as a “psychological refuge” they indirectly use to justify their consumption of factory farmed products.

Most Americans have been exposed to the realities of animal farming from hundreds of undercover investigations over the years and dozens of scientific reports on the industry’s environmental and public health impacts.

But their minds resolve this conflict between their values and their behavior by insisting that they eat a humane kind of meat that doesn’t cause animal suffering or environmental damage. Their other options are to stop eating animal products or to accept that what they’re doing is harmful, and neither of these options are particularly appealing. This is why we see 75% of US adults thinking they eat humane meat, despite fewer than 1% of farmed animals actually living on non-factory farms.

Ethical farming – nice try
At the California egg farm I visited, the devil was in the details. Despite the pastoral scenery, I found that the birds were in worse health than those of any other farm I’d been to. I saw many cases of Marek’s, a highly contagious disease that had led to partial blindness in many of them; swollen abdomens, some with over a pound of fluid buildup in their less-than-five-pound body;and lice.

Like the hens in factory farms, many of them suffered and died from cancer, stuck eggs, reproductive tract infections, and other ailments that result from artificial breeding for hyperactive reproductive systems that make them lay unnatural numbers of eggs.

When I visited the farm, I sincerely wanted to believe that these animals had good lives, but the evidence just wasn’t there to support it. It wasn’t as bad as the factory farms I visited, but it still wasn’t the kind of life I’d want to live myself.

Of course, the current scarcity of humane animal farms doesn’t preclude their theoretically possibility. But consider the cost: the eggs at the farm I visited cost over $6 per dozen. Hardly anyone is willing to pay that much for food, and that farm still had serious ethical problems.

I was disappointed by the visit to this farm and other farm visits, as well as evidence from hundreds of other visits to “humane” farms by animal protection advocates and investigators. Mercy For Animals, the international non-profit animal protection organisation, says it randomly selects farms to investigate, and other groups have specifically sought out farms with leading humane certifications in order to show that even the animals on those farms still suffer tremendously.

 A Leghorn chicken in California. Photograph: Allen J. Schaben/LA Times via Getty Images

Time to abolish factory farming
We would need extensive regulations and enforcement to maintain high animal welfare throughout the industry. This would include the expenses of regular independent inspections and livestreamed security footage at all facilities.

Consumers or taxpayers would also need to pay for direct costs such as more space per animal, an army of veterinarians and medical supplies for sick animals, and a reversion of the artificial breeding that has made animals grow meat and produce milk and eggs at ultra-fast rates. That level of welfare doesn’t exist at the very best farms today, so even the steep price tag of the eggs from the pasture farm I visited is still too low to guarantee that the animals have good lives.

So even if humane animal farming is possible in theory, and maybe even real in a handful of isolated cases, it can’t feasibly feed around 10 billion people by 2050.

The fact is that when we use animals as raw materials or labor in the food system this inevitably leads to mass cruelty because cheap prices and profits will always come before their welfare.

This means we need to take a position against animal farming. Then I think we’ll be on track to end all animal farming..

(Source: The Guardian)

Read this and you may never eat chicken again

Most meat animals are raised with the assistance of daily doses of antibiotics. By 2050, antibiotic resistance will cause a staggering 10 million deaths a year, writes Maryn McKenna her book 'Big Chicken'. Read the excerpts:  

Every year I spend some time in a tiny apartment in Paris, seven storeys above the mayor’s offices for the 11th arrondissement. The Place de la Bastille – the spot where the French revolution sparked political change that transformed the world – is a 10-minute walk down a narrow street that threads between student nightclubs and Chinese fabric wholesalers.

Twice a week, hundreds of Parisians crowd down it, heading to the marché de la Bastille, stretched out along the center island of the Boulevard Richard Lenoir.

Blocks before you reach the market, you can hear it: a low hum of argument and chatter, punctuated by dollies thumping over the curbstones and vendors shouting deals. But even before you hear it, you can smell it: the funk of bruised cabbage leaves underfoot, the sharp sweetness of fruit sliced open for samples, the iodine tang of seaweed propping up rafts of scallops in broad rose-colored shells.

Threaded through them is one aroma that I wait for. Burnished and herbal, salty and slightly burned, it has so much heft that it feels physical, like an arm slid around your shoulders to urge you to move a little faster. It leads to a tented booth in the middle of the market and a line of customers that wraps around the tent poles and trails down the market alley, tangling with the crowd in front of the flower seller.

In the middle of the booth is a closet-size metal cabinet, propped up on iron wheels and bricks. Inside the cabinet, flattened chickens are speared on rotisserie bars that have been turning since before dawn. Every few minutes, one of the workers detaches a bar, slides off its dripping bronze contents, slips the chickens into flat foil-lined bags, and hands them to the customers who have persisted to the head of the line.

I can barely wait to get my chicken home.

Chickens roam in an outdoor enclosure of a chicken farm in Vielle-Soubiran, south-western France. Photograph: Iroz Gaizka/AFP/Getty Images

The skin of a poulet crapaudine – named because its spatchcocked outline resembles a crapaud, a toad – shatters like mica; the flesh underneath, basted for hours by the birds dripping on to it from above, is pillowy but springy, imbued to the bone with pepper and thyme.

The first time I ate it, I was stunned into happy silence, too intoxicated by the experience to process why it felt so new. The second time, I was delighted again –and then, afterward, sulky and sad.

I had eaten chicken all my life: in my grandmother’s kitchen in Brooklyn, in my parents’ house in Houston, in a college dining hall, friends’ apartments, restaurants and fast food places, trendy bars in cities and old-school joints on back roads in the south. I thought I roasted a chicken pretty well myself. But none of them were ever like this, mineral and lush and direct.

I thought of the chickens I’d grown up eating. They tasted like whatever the cook added to them: canned soup in my grandmother’s fricassee, her party dish; soy sauce and sesame in the stir fries my college housemate brought from her aunt’s restaurant; lemon juice when my mother worried about my father’s blood pressure and banned salt from the house.

This French chicken tasted like muscle and blood and exercise and the outdoors. It tasted like something that it was too easy to pretend it was not: like an animal, like a living thing. We have made it easy not to think about what chickens were before we find them on our plates or pluck them from supermarket cold cases.

I live, most of the time, less than an hour’s drive from Gainesville, Georgia, the self-described poultry capital of the world, where the modern chicken industry was born. Georgia raises 1.4bn broilers a year, making it the single biggest contributor to the almost 9bn birds raised each year in the United States; if it were an independent country, it would rank in chicken production somewhere near China and Brazil.

Yet you could drive around for hours without ever knowing you were in the heart of chicken country unless you happened to get behind a truck heaped with crates of birds on their way from the remote solid-walled barns they are raised in to the gated slaughter plants where they are turned into meat. That first French market chicken opened my eyes to how invisible chickens had been for me, and after that, my job began to show me what that invisibility had masked.

My house is less than two miles from the front gate of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the federal agency that sends disease detectives racing to outbreaks all over the world. For more than a decade, one of my obsessions as a journalist has been following them on their investigations – and in long late-night conversations in the United States and Asia and Africa, with physicians and veterinarians and epidemiologists, I learned that the chickens that had surprised me and the epidemics that fascinated me were more closely linked than I had ever realized.

I discovered that the reason American chicken tastes so different from those I ate everywhere else was that in the United States, we breed for everything but flavor: for abundance, for consistency, for speed. Many things made that transformation possible.

But as I came to understand, the single biggest influence was that, consistently over decades, we have been feeding chickens, and almost every other meat animal, routine doses of antibiotics on almost every day of their lives.

Caged battery hens in a chicken farm in Catania, Sicily. Photograph: Fabrizio Villa/AFP/Getty Images

Antibiotics do not create blandness, but they created the conditions that allowed chicken to be bland, allowing us to turn a skittish, active backyard bird into a fast-growing, slow-moving, docile block of protein, as muscle-bound and top-heavy as a bodybuilder in a kids’ cartoon. At this moment, most meat animals, across most of the planet, are raised with the assistance of doses of antibiotics on most days of their lives: 63,151 tons of antibiotics per year, about 126m pounds.

Farmers began using the drugs because antibiotics allowed animals to convert feed to tasty muscle more efficiently; when that result made it irresistible to pack more livestock into barns, antibiotics protected animals against the likelihood of disease. Those discoveries, which began with chickens, created “what we choose to call industrialized agriculture”, a poultry historian living in Georgia proudly wrote in 1971.

Chicken prices fell so low that it became the meat that Americans eat more than any other – and the meat most likely to transmit food-borne illness, and also antibiotic resistance, the greatest slow-brewing health crisis of our time.

 Most meat animals, across most of the planet, are raised with the assistance of doses of antibiotics on most days of their lives
For most people, antibiotic resistance is a hidden epidemic unless they have the misfortune to contract an infection themselves or have a family member or friend unlucky enough to become infected.

Drug-resistant infections have no celebrity spokespeople, negligible political support and few patients’ organizations advocating for them. If we think of resistant infections, we imagine them as something rare, occurring to people unlike us, whoever we are: people who are in nursing homes at the end of their lives, or dealing with the drain of chronic illness, or in intensive-care units after terrible trauma. But resistant infections are a vast and common problem that occur in every part of daily life: to children in daycare, athletes playing sports, teens going for piercings, people getting healthy in the gym.

And though common, resistant bacteria are a grave threat and getting worse.

They are responsible for at least 700,000 deaths around the world each year: 23,000 in the United States, 25,000 in Europe, more than 63,000 babies in India. Beyond those deaths, bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics cause millions of illnesses – 2m annually just in the United States – and cost billions in healthcare spending, lost wages and lost national productivity.

It is predicted that by 2050, antibiotic resistance will cost the world $100tn and will cause a staggering 10m deaths per year.

Disease organisms have been developing defenses against the antibiotics meant to kill them for as long as antibiotics have existed. Penicillin arrived in the 1940s, and resistance to it swept the world in the 1950s.

 Resistant bacteria are a grave threat and getting worse. They are responsible for at least 700,000 deaths each year
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Tetracycline arrived in 1948, and resistance was nibbling at its effectiveness before the 1950s ended. Erythromycin was discovered in 1952, and erythromycin resistance arrived in 1955. Methicillin, a lab-synthesized relative of penicillin, was developed in 1960 specifically to counter penicillin resistance, yet within a year, staph bacteria developed defenses against it as well, earning the bug the name MRSA, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

After MRSA, there were the ESBLs, extended-spectrum beta-lactamases, which defeated not only penicillin and its relatives but also a large family of antibiotics called cephalosporins. And after cephalosporins were undermined, new antibiotics were achieved and lost in turn.

Each time pharmaceutical chemistry produced a new class of antibiotics, with a new molecular shape and a new mode of action, bacteria adapted. In fact, as the decades passed, they seemed to adapt faster than before. Their persistence threatened to inaugurate a post-antibiotic era, in which surgery could be too dangerous to attempt and ordinary health problems – scrapes, tooth extractions, broken limbs – could pose a deadly risk.

For a long time, it was assumed that the extraordinary unspooling of antibiotic resistance around the world was due only to misuse of the drugs in medicine: to parents begging for the drugs even though their children had viral illnesses that antibiotics could not help; physicians prescribing antibiotics without checking to see whether the drug they chose was a good match; people stopping their prescriptions halfway through the prescribed course because they felt better, or saving some pills for friends without health insurance, or buying antibiotics over the counter, in the many countries where they are available that way and dosing themselves.

But from the earliest days of the antibiotic era, the drugs have had another, parallel use: in animals that are grown to become food.

Eighty percent of the antibiotics sold in the United States and more than half of those sold around the world are used in animals, not in humans. Animals destined to be meat routinely receive antibiotics in their feed and water, and most of those drugs are not given to treat diseases, which is how we use them in people.

Instead, antibiotics are given to make food animals put on weight more quickly than they would otherwise, or to protect food animals from illnesses that the crowded conditions of livestock production make them vulnerable to. And nearly two-thirds of the antibiotics that are used for those purposes are compounds that are also used against human illness – which means that when resistance against the farm use of those drugs arises, it undermines the drugs’ usefulness in human medicine as well.

Caged chickens in San Diego, California. California voters passed a new animal welfare law in 2008 to require that the state’s egg-laying hens be given room to move. Photograph: Christian Science Monitor/Getty Images

Resistance is a defensive adaptation, an evolutionary strategy that allows bacteria to protect themselves against antibiotics’ power to kill them. It is created by subtle genetic changes that allow organisms to counter antibiotics’ attacks on them, altering their cell walls to keep drug molecules from attaching or penetrating, or forming tiny pumps that eject the drugs after they have entered the cell.

What slows the emergence of resistance is using an antibiotic conservatively: at the right dose, for the right length of time, for an organism that will be vulnerable to the drug, and not for any other reason. Most antibiotic use in agriculture violates those rules.

Resistant bacteria are the result.

Antibiotic resistance is like climate change: it is an overwhelming threat, created over decades by millions of individual decisions and reinforced by the actions of industries.

It is also like climate change in that the industrialized west and the emerging economies of the global south are at odds. One quadrant of the globe already enjoyed the cheap protein of factory farming and now regrets it; the other would like not to forgo its chance. And it is additionally like climate change because any action taken in hopes of ameliorating the problem feels inadequate, like buying a fluorescent lightbulb while watching a polar bear drown.

But that it seems difficult does not mean it is not possible. The willingness to relinquish antibiotics of farmers in the Netherlands, as well as Perdue Farms and other companies in the United States, proves that industrial-scale production can be achieved without growth promoters or preventive antibiotic use. The stability of Maïsadour and Loué and White Oak Pastures shows that medium-sized and small farms can secure a place in a remixed meat economy.

Whole Foods’ pivot to slower-growing chicken – birds that share some of the genetics preserved by Frank Reese – illustrates that removing antibiotics and choosing birds that do not need them returns biodiversity to poultry production. All of those achievements are signposts, pointing to where chicken, and cattle and hogs and farmed fish after them, need to go: to a mode of production where antibiotics are used as infrequently as possible – to care for sick animals, but not to fatten or protect them.

That is the way antibiotics are now used in human medicine, and it is the only way that the utility of antibiotics and the risk of resistance can be adequately balanced.

(Source: The Guardian)

India's farmed chickens dosed with world's strongest antibiotics, study finds

Warning over wider global health impacts after findings reveal hundreds of tonnes of colistin – the ‘antibiotic of last resort’ – are being shipped to India’s farms

Chickens raised in India for food have been dosed with some of the strongest antibiotics known to medicine, in practices that could have repercussions throughout the world.

Hundreds of tonnes of an “antibiotic of last resort” – only used in the most extreme cases of sickness - are shipped to India each year to be used, without medical supervision, on animals that may not require the drugs but are being dosed with them nevertheless to promote the growth of healthy animals.

Routine use of some of the strongest antibiotics, which doctors have said should be preserved for the most extreme cases lest resistance to them should increase and prevent their use for the diseases for which they are intended, is now a common practice in farming in the developing world. The consequences will be felt throughout the world because resistance to strong antibiotics is spread among organisms.

Germs with qualities that can make them dangerous to humans will, if untreated or poorly treated, mutate into more powerful pathogens that are resistant to treatment. Poor or inadequate public heath treatments assists this process, potentially spreading pathogens around the world.

A study by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has found that hundreds of tonnes of colistin, described as an antibiotic of last resort, have been shipped to India for the routine treatment of animals, chiefly chickens, on farms.

The finding is concerning because the use of such powerful drugs can lead to an increasing resistance among farm animals around the world. Colistin is regarded as one of the last lines of defence against serious diseases, including pneumonia, which cannot be treated by other medicines. Without these drugs, diseases that were commonly treatable in the last century will become deadly once again.

There is nothing to prevent Indian farmers, which include some of the world’s biggest food producers, from exporting their chickens and other related products overseas. There are currently no regulations that would prevent such export to the UK on hygiene terms, except for those agreed under the EU. Any regulations to be negotiated after Brexit might not take account of these regulations.

(Source: The Guardian)

Modern “halal” meat is a mockery of Islam

Eating meat in Islam is not a right or a duty. Eating meat is a privilege, extended to us by Allah with responsibilities attached.

O mankind, eat from whatever is on earth [that is] lawful and good and do not follow the footsteps of Satan. Indeed, he is to you a clear enemy [2:168]

Unfortunately, many Muslims today don’t seem to care about the food they eat, at the expense of their akirah. This article is a warning to Muslims around the world to start paying attention before its too late.

Deformed chickens rescued from a cage chicken farm.

Industrial meat, egg and dairy operations operate under a capitalist system, not the Shariah.

Consequently the only important component is money, not animal welfare or health. Under the Shariah animals have rights. Abuse of animals is haram. If you’re familiar with Islam then you know a woman went to hell for denying a cat food and water and on the day of judgement Muslims will have to account for their treatment of animals too.

So how are you going to explain to Allah on the day of judgement your decision to support a system that is inherently cruel and violates the rights of animals? In a sahih hadith the Prophet (saw) warns us that we’ll be cursed if we mistreat animals.

Jabir reported: The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, prohibited beating or cauterizing animals on the face.

In another narration, the Prophet said, “Allah has cursed whoever does this. Let not one of you mark the face or strike it.”

Yet most industrial animal facilities routinely beat animals and cauterize them on their face. In fact de-beaking (burning the beak off) is routine in all cage and battery chicken facilities. If you buy cage or battery chicken you’re providing a financial incentive for these companies to keep burning these chickens beaks off. How will you as a Muslim explain your actions to Allah on the day of judgement?

Young chicken having its beak burned off so that it won’t be able to peck other chickens in its cage due to stress.

Often people will counter this point by saying that while their treatment is wrong, because they were slaughtered correctly the meat is still halal. This might be true, but its a technical truth that goes against the spirit of this religion, just like temporary marriage (Mutah or Misyar — Dont believe me?

See what Qaradawi says about it). Furthermore, just because it is halal doesn’t mean you have to buy it, and while you might not be punished for eating the meat you might be punished for supporting the system. Do you want to take that risk?

Chicken with mutilated beak from a caged chicken farm.

Furthermore, eating meat every day comes at the expense of the wider globe. The carbon footprint from the meat industry grows with every passing second and the destructive results from climate change are already having a terrible effect (particularly in many Muslim countries). We know the Prophet (saw) and the Sahaba rarely ate meat so why do we need to eat it every day? Even if you argue that they rarely ate it because they were often poor or travelling you need to ask yourself the single most important question:

Would the Prophet (saw) do this today?

Would he eat meat from tortured animals? Would he eat meat every day knowing how detrimental industrial farming practices were on the globe? Would he buy meat knowing his money would be used to support a system that causes nothing but pain, misery and destruction?

Think long and hard about those questions.

This doesn’t mean you have to stop eating meat though, but if you want to actually respect the Shariah and follow the sunnah of the Prophet (saw) then you need to actually know what you’re eating. That means spending more money to buy free-range meat products that are in line with the spirit of the Shariah.

It also means putting your money where your mouth is and not supporting halal businesses that source their meat from unethical suppliers. If you have a favorite restaurant that cooks amazing chicken biryani, find out where they get their chicken from and if its not acceptable tell them.

At the end of the day the choice is yours but if you love this religion and you care about your akhirah then stop treating animals like commodities and treat them like our Prophet (saw) would. Talk to your parents about this issue. Talk to your families about this issue. Share this article on twitter or on facebook and protect yourself from hell-fire.

(Source: Medium)

14 legendary military hotels of Bengaluru you should visit if your taste buds have lost their life

When we are going through the chaos of the city, the muddling holy mess of traffic, tiresome office, and the ever boring Khara bath’s of Bengaluru, we have something Desi culinary of Karnataka around us to make our day. The meaty and toothsome Kaima Curry and steaming hot biriyanis from Bengaluru’s military hotels are the ones you must taste before you die. What an Aroma! Can you afford to miss the firmness of meatballs and the ever gorgeous Raagi Balls cooked over coals and served on plates made of dried leaves? There is a history for the taste of food served here. Come, let us know about these legendary military hotels of Bengaluru which are there here from the time when the city was called as Bangalore.

There is a history for Military Hotels in Bengaluru. It dates back to 17th century when Maratha soldiers craved for meat food. It is said that SG Rao Military hotel of Cottonpet area is the city’s first recognized military hotel and was established by S Govinda Rao Rannore, a Maratha in 1908. There is an another tale that says that these hotels have served military workers and martial class and so is the name Military hotel. Most hotels of this kind in the city are full-bodied around Cottonpet, Jayanagar, and Malleswaram areas as these were the popular areas of Old Bangalore.

Shivaji Military Hotel
Shivaji Military Hotel (SMH) which is known for its authentic Donne Biriyani is an age old hotel started by Manji Rao in early 1930. It was started to give the feel of Maratha cuisine and it is still fresh and hot in 2017. This food joint is run by the family of Marathas; Rajeev Rao and Lokesh Rao who have taken over from their father, M Laxman Rao. The legacy of SMH is still going strong and it is so popular that celebrities stand in a queue to relish their finger licking dishes.

The menu of SMH includes Dosa, Leg Soup, Mutton Biriyani, and Kheema. This is a typical breakfast menu of this military hotel and kitchen expands to prepare multiple chicken and mutton dishes for an afternoon meal. You may miss out a few dishes if you arrive a little later as the place will be highly crowded on all days of the week.

SMH has its own style of preparation and you will be amazed to know that the ingredients used here are of typical Maratha genre. Donne Biriyani being a winsome dish of SMH, it is prepared in copper vessels cooked over charcoal stoves. It is that vintage style of preparation gets that taste to it. It is one of those few hotels of Bangalore that is open from early 8 AM to late 3:30 PM.

Must Have – Mutton Biriyani, Mutton Fry, Chicken Leg Fry, Donne Chicken Biriyani
Where: No. 718, 1st floor, C Main Road, 45th Cross, 8th Block, Jayanagar, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560082

Ranganna Military Hotel
End your craving for the World’s best Thalai Maamasa (Head Meat), Paaya (trotter soup) and Kaima ball fry in this highly acclaimed non-veg food destination of Bangalore, Ranganna military hotel. You feel like you are in heaven when you put the piping hot mutton pulao in your mouth and I’m not exaggerating. Muniranganna (owner) says, “Our spices come from KR market and are ground fresh at the premises.” The early morning ride to this hotel and the scrumptious Kaal Soup (Leg Soup) along with Idli and Kaima are enough to make your day.
Open: 7:30 AM to 4 PM and 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM
Where: 61, KR Rd, Tata Silk Farm, Jayanagar, Bengaluru

New Govind Rao Military Hotel
This 108-year old restaurant is insanely famous for Idlis and Kheema Curry. Their Mutton pulao is equally toothsome and tangy which makes it a must-try dish. Do not miss to try the meat fries associated with chili and pepper.
Open: 6 AM to 3:30 PM and 7:00 PM to 10:30 PM
Where: No.7, Cottonpet Main Road, Opp Sudha Lodge, Bengaluru

Naidu Military Hotel
N.V Naid Military Hotel is located in the busy heart of City market which is a family-run restaurant typically tucked in the by-lanes. It has a small entrance and its interior has the broad corridor wadded with stone tables and chairs. Everything on their menu is delicious but the best order is pepper chicken fry and mutton pulao. The meat will be so smooth and firm that you can just tease it away from the bone with your two fingers. The lemon Rasam that is served at the end of the meal is something you can’t slurp without making a sound.
Open: 8 AM to 4 PM
Where: #14, Venkatachalliah Lane, City Market

Gowdru
Gowdru and Non-Veg are such a combination that it can be compared to Raj-Simran and Romeo-Juliet types. A day in the life of Gowda is incomplete without eating Ragi Balls and Non-Veg is a must-have thing on the plate. This Gowdru hotel located in Indiranagar is known for its Mutton Curry and Raagi Mudde. If you want to try something tastier then go for Bheja fry, Boti Masala, and Mutton Chops.
Open: 11 AM to 4 PM and 7 PM to 10:30 PM
Where: 3, Opposite Aishwarya Bar, Appareddy Palya, Double Road, Indiranagar

Chandu’s Military Hotel
If you are in Malleswaram then don’t miss Chandu’s mutton chops, Raagi Mudde, and Bheja pepper fry. The texture and flavors of this hotel are unique and piquant. You can also try Boti fry, Nalli Masala, and Chicken Fry.
Open: 11:30 AM to 4 PM and 7 PM to 11 PM
Where: 8th Cross, Near Malleshwaram Circle

Rajanna Hindu Military Hotel
Why Hindu? It is just to let you know that beef and pork are not served here. Rajanna Military hotel is known for its Naati style of cooking and their Mutton Korma, Kaima, and Biriyani rice can wake up your sluggish taste buds. Everything Non-Veg you wanted to eat is available here.
Open: 7 AM to 10 PM
Where: Govindraj Nagar ward, Prashanth Nagar, Vijayanagar

Kaveri Military Hotel
On a usual note, Military hotels don’t serve Pork but this is one among them that do. The brick benches and wooden tables make the interiors of Kaveri Military hotel and here you can relish the corgi style of preparation. Pork pepper and chicken curry are a must-have dishes.
Open: 7 AM to 10:30 PM
Where: Next to Nandi Upachar, Rani Circle, NH-17, Devanahalli, Kurubarakunte

Few more
Sangam Military Hotel in Jayanagar 14th cross road

Srinidhi Hindu Military Hotel in South End Road, Basavanagudi

Aditya Hotel in Mahalakshmi Layout

Hotel Prashanth near Kamakya theater

Nati style of Manuvana, Vijayanagar and

Siddappa mess near Gali Anjaneya temple

(Source: Metro Saga)

More than a MILLION POUNDS of RAT meat is sold as boneless chicken wings in the USA!

The United States food and drug administration (FDA) is worried because it turns out that a whopping one million pounds of rat meat is being sold on the market.

The rat meat is sold in the form of boneless chicken wings and it is then served in restaurants on the entire territory of the USA.

There are reports that reveal that FDA agents are very concerned about the situation. This happened after a number of illegal shipping containers arrived from China. They were seized by the law enforcement agencies at the San Francisco port.

They contained rat meat that was supposed to be shipped to different companies. These companies would process it and then sell it as chicken meat.

There is a report that claims that the amount of meat that has been seized is so large, that they don’t know what to do with it, other than destroy it. The people from the FDA warn that there are around one million pounds of rat meat still being sold as chicken in the U.S.

Please, be careful and don’t buy suspicious chicken meat. Buy chicken from a secure seller or a person that you trust.

(Source: Health Fit Point)

Passing through Ankapur in Nizamabad? Meet the man behind a special Telangana flavoured chicken

The rush of all the vehicles halts at a man who is seen busy preparing masalas or soaking nicely snipped chicken pieces into a well-melted marination of local masalas in a tiny room.

On every weekend afternoon, the village centre of  Ankapur in Nizamabad sees people thronging from Hyderabad, the neighbouring Karimnagar and Medak districts.

Ankapur, also known as 'mini USA', due to its facilities, is located in Armoor mandal in NH-63, 20 kilometres away from the district headquarters.

The rush of all the vehicles halts at a man who is seen busy preparing masalas or soaking nicely snipped chicken pieces into a well-melted marination of local masalas in a tiny room.

Many feel that a trip to Nizamabad or the nearer Sriram Sagar project is incomplete without tasting the famous Ankapur Chicken. This delicious chicken was also listed in the T-food fest which was organised on the occasion of Telangana formation day at Peoples Plaza Hyderabad.

48-year-old Papa Goud, well known for his culinary art, is the unassuming man behind this Telangana flavour that is touring globally. Though this dish exists since the late 1990's in Goud's hotel it only gained fame recently.

Papa Goud says, "I have learnt it from my father Pedda Rama Goud, who used to cook for family functions and marriages in the villages.  Now I am taking orders on the phone and keep it ready by the time they arrive in the village."

When he was asked what makes his cuisine so unique, he holds out packets of local chilli powder and other masalas and says, "I don't buy anything from supermarkets or use packet stuff. My wife Bhulaxmi or I go to the local market to buy them directly from farmers."

While adding homemade ginger-garlic paste he says, "Anything we buy in shops is not as fresh, that is why we prefer this." While adding fresh coriander leaves to the sizzling chicken, he says, "It is a matter of half an hour to 45 minutes, from cutting to heating up the pieces on the stove and mixing the masalas."

Papa Goud has been offered several jobs in star hotels in Hyderabad but he chooses to live in his village independently rather than work for someone else.

While this is a family recipe, Papa Goud does not believe in patenting the recipe.  "Many came to me, worked in my place learnt this and they themselves opened branches. I'm happy this is giving life to many people. Everyone should get a chance, it is unfair to claim rights over it," he says with a smile.

He interrupts our conversation to point out that the chicken is ready.  "Those who have tasted the chicken say 'mast hain'," says a regular patron of the shop.

One can combine Papa Goud's chicken with fresh palm toddy served at the nearby Palm Groves, another of Ankapur's favourite spots. As another patron picks up his takeaway parcel, he says, "We get the regional flavour of chicken that too at a cheap price."

Papa Goud proudly says, "Our chicken has even been parcelled to Dubai and Bahrain for the people who want a taste of Telangana spices with jawari roti."

It is just not the taste that delights his patrons but also the price. The price for a family pack that is cooked with a whole chicken is Rs 500. Separate packs for Rs 120-140 are also available for takeaway.

If it is not possible to go to Ankapur, the Ankapur chicken is also available at other Telangana cities such as Karimnagar, Warangal, Nizamabad. Although the taste might be a tad different from the one Papa Goud lovingly prepares.

(Source: TNM)

You Just Can’t Say No to Shawarma

It has been nearly eight months since I moved to this small, oil and gas-rich country, Qatar, in the Gulf. In some way or the other I’m adjusting the life here and it hasn’t been that difficult. And life here seems like revolving always around eating! We keep visiting a few restaurants around the town and try out new dishes, despite Vij generally enjoys homemade food. One dish that neither he nor I can say no to, is Shawarma. This simple and yet tasty dish always pulls us towards restaurants pretty often. And I haven’t come across a person who has not liked shawarma, if not crazy about it.  If anybody living in the Middle East has not tasted it, trust me, they have not lived their life to the fullest, because I’ve seen even those who don’t eat non-veg back home relishing shawarma here! Trust me, not just Arabs, even people from other nationalities also are hooked on to this Arabic delicacy.

Let me tell you what it is all about. Shawarma is nothing but pita bread sandwich, with beef, lamb or chicken. It is very much similar to a Greek gyros or a British donner kebab served with sesame paste. They sell like hot cakes here and no matter where we go, unless we are around the desert sand dunes, we can spot shawarma shops. We can always find massive towering logs of revolving meat and their vertical skewer and then roasted slowly to perfection against a burning grill.

I have tried out several recipes, including shawarma, at home. Believe me, the taste definitely matters. Cooking shawarma at home can be really tedious and is very difficult to make an authentic one. Reason? It needs Makina, shawarma grill, and sorry to say this, it costs a bomb. Depending on the size and quality the price varies. I heard they range somewhere between $200 and $3000 and above. But the thing is, do we really have that much of time to stand behind that burning hot grill? Well we have to laud the men who stand behind that hot grill all the day in this scorching heat and make those mouthwatering shawarmas. Trust me I can’t even stand near that grill when those guys make shawarmas for us in shops. Sometimes I wonder the capacity of them to bear that heat. Had I been in his place, maybe I would have fainted every half an hour because of the heat. So better to head towards any good shawarma shop and pay just QR8 to QR12 and enjoy the best taste without any hassles. 

Don’t be surprised if I tell you that every time we eat shawarma they taste different, thanks to the method of preparing at every shop. The method of slicing the meat into thin slices and building up logs on the grill does not change, but the spices used will differ, making a great difference in the taste. We found them to be different and less spicy, rather call it bland, in Arabic shops, whereas Indian shops make them more spicy.

Al Sadd has good shawarma shops and often we bump into any of them. You have to just see the number of people coming and buying shawarmas to believe the popularity of this. 

If you are not living in the Middle East and still interested to prepare shawarma at home, don’t worry. Learn a few tricks that can give you the yummiest chicken shawarma without the need of any makina. Here’s a simple recipe.

Ingredients

Chicken: ½ kg (cut into thin strips. I use 75% of chicken breast and 25% boneless chicken thighs, as the fat in the thighs help chicken to get a nice flavor and colour when grilled).

Cardamom powder: ¼ tsp

Cinnamon powder: ¼ tsp

Pepper powder: 1 tsp (can increase or decrease according to your taste)

Red chilli powder: 1 tsp (can increase or decrease according to your taste)

Minced garlic: 2-3 tsp

Lemon juice: 1 tsp

Vinegar: ¼ cup

Yoghurt: 4-5 tsp

Salt: To taste

Pita bread: 4

Chopped tomato: 2

Chopped cabbage: 2-3 tsp

Chopped lettuce: 2-3 tsp

Pickled cucumber: 4

Mayonnaise: 2-3 tsp

Method

Combine the spices, salt, garlic, onion, lemon juice and vinegar and mix well and marinate the chicken overnight in the fridge.

Grill the marinated chicken in a George Forman grill till cooked (it took me 10 minutes) or on a BBQ grill. After cooking, shred the chicken into thin pieces and keep it aside.

Spread mayonnaise on pita bread, add shredded chicken, cabbage, cucumber pickles and chopped tomatoes, and roll the bread into shawarma.