Monday, February 24, 2020

EPA OKs continued use of tuberculosis drugs to fight citrus disease in California, Florida

WHY US DRUG PRICES ARE SO HIGH
AND HOW YOUR FRESH FRUIT IS KILLING YOU
AND INCREASING ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE 
ALWAYS WASH FRUIT


Mark Olalde, The Desert Sun

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency quietly issued another emergency approval for farmers in California and Florida to continue applying a medically important antibiotic to citrus crops. Because the drug is used to treat tuberculosis in humans, the move has raised concerns that it could exacerbate widespread antibiotic resistance. 

© Jay Calderon and Richard Lui/The Desert Sun drone photograph Seley Ranches produces grapefruits, lemons and tangerines in the desert near Borrego Springs. The orchard relies on groundwater pumped from the aquifer.

Although the decision is dated April 2019, it was not published in the Federal Register until January, and the EPA did not publicize the approval. The authorization runs until April in California and December in Florida.

The EPA says that widespread application of the drug streptomycin, as well as a similar antibiotic it has approved called oxytetracycline, is necessary to fight citrus greening disease, which has decimated much of Florida's orange and grapefruit yield and appeared in Southern California in 2008.

The disease is spread by bacteria riding on the Asian citrus psyllid, an insect.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least 2.8 million people are infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and more than 35,000 people die as a result.

In a statement provided to The Desert Sun, EPA staff said the impact of streptomycin use in agriculture is "considered negligible" when compared to the level of antibiotics used in livestock. "Streptomycin, an antibiotic, is a critical tool used by farmers to control citrus greening. Citrus greening is considered the most serious citrus disease worldwide," the statement said.


But the decision to approve the continued use of streptomycin, which was initially approved to combat citrus greening in Florida in 2016 and California in 2018, was predicated on "loopholes and weird things going on with the law," said Emily Knobbe, an EPA policy specialist with the Center for Biological Diversity, which has for years acted as a watchdog on the federal government's approvals of pesticides and related chemicals. The center was first to note the January Federal Register entry.

The approval of streptomycin and other antibiotics came via emergency exemptions, meaning they skipped a full safety review. If farmers choose to apply as much of the drug as the EPA allows, potentially hundreds of thousands of pounds of streptomycin could be deposited on crops in California and Florida. By total weight, this is several dozen times more than what Americans ingest annually.

"To be risking such a significant problem for really not even a cure, not even a solution to citrus greening disease is really irresponsible on the part of EPA," Knobbe said.
Citrus greening in the valley

Craig Armstrong is the owner of Thermiculture Management, a farming company in Thermal that specializes in citrus and dates, and he sits on the industry-elected California Citrus Pest and Disease Prevention Committee that advises the state's Department of Food and Agriculture. He said the committee neither endorsed nor suggested prohibiting the use of streptomycin, partly because its efficacy is not fully proven.

Farmers did not receive the green light with fully open arms, though. "There was quite a bit of push-back, even from some of the large growers in the industry, because the verdict is still out on it," Armstrong said.

The disease has appeared on crops elsewhere in California, and the insects that carry it are present in the built-up portions of the Coachella Valley. But, Armstrong said, fields in the valley have so far escaped the disease due to the desert's heat, coordinated pest control measures, and releases of green lacewing, a predator of psyllids.

Trevor Murphy is a third-generation citrus grower in Florida where he's the COO of Kahn Citrus Management. He said that when antibiotics were first held up as a potential answer to citrus greening disease, his company tested them on trial plots. When the test run brought an increase in costs but not crop yields, the company decided against using them.

Instead, he said the most effective techniques to fight the disease all focus on plant health: composting to increase the soil's nutrient load, better water management and a massive increase in fertilizer application, although that comes with its own downstream environmental impacts.

"We're trying to give the tree everything that it needs to keep going," Murphy said.

© J. Scott Applewhite / AP Under Administrator Andrew Wheeler's watch, the EPA has taken an industry-friendly approach to deregulating.

Higher costs aside, scientists, politicians and environmentalists caution what allowing antibiotic application means for public health.

In 2017, the CDC gave a presentation to the EPA about streptomycin and other antibiotics, which the Center for Biological Diversity obtained via a records request. The presentation noted that "the use of antibiotics as pesticides has the potential to select for antimicrobial-resistant bacteria present in the environment."

There were 9,025 reported cases of tuberculosis in the U.S. in 2018 — 2.8 cases per every 100,000 people — according to CDC data. While the U.S. has kept its rate of tuberculosis low compared to other countries, drug-resistant strains increase treatment costs many-fold.

In August, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and other members of Congress sent a letter to EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler lambasting the agency's emergency exemptions.

"The fact that EPA arrived at conclusions that appear to disregard scientific evidence showing significant risks to human health and our environment raises grave concerns that EPA has not appropriately considered all available evidence," they wrote.

In its statement, agency spokespeople wrote that "EPA does not take antibiotic resistance lightly." They said the agency "worked closely" with CDC and FDA staff in coming to the decision to again approve the drug's use and that three years was the standard length of time for which they granted emergency exemptions.
Long-term emergencies

But streptomycin emergency exemptions have already been granted for longer than that, about five years in Florida.

The Center for Biological Diversity's research suggests the EPA is quick to issue such emergency orders despite concerns about the underlying scientific analyses. In the case of the pesticide sulfoxaflor, which the agency has acknowledged harms pollinators such as bees, the EPA granted at least 78 emergency exemptions between 2012 and 2017 for its use on cotton and sorghum fields alone, only eight of which went through a public review.

The environmental nonprofit is currently suing the EPA and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to compel further disclosure of records relating to these decisions under the Freedom of Information Act. 


© California Department of Food and Agriculture Asian citrus psyllid carry the bacteria that cause citrus greening disease.

"The thing that we think is really abusive about how EPA uses emergency exemptions is that they do not use them as 'emergencies,'" Knobbe said. "They use them year after year after year after year rather than going through the full registration process."

Even the agriculture industry, which has been quick to defend the Trump administration's industry-friendly pesticide policies, is wary of fast-tracking antibiotics that come with likely consequences for public health.

"A lot of these things will come out as a silver bullet," Armstrong said. "You really have to look at the full 360-degree perspective."

Mark Olalde covers the environment for The Desert Sun. Contact him at molalde@gannett.com, and follow him on Twitter at @MarkOlalde.

This article originally appeared on The Desert Sun: EPA OKs continued use of tuberculosis drugs to fight citrus disease in California, Florida

No comments:

Post a Comment