The New York Times, Saturday 18 May 2019, Farmers Turn to Antibiotics, to Treat the Trees
'Zolfo Springs, Florida -- A pernicious disease is eating away at Roy Petteway's orange trees. The bacterial infection, transmitted by a tiny winged insect from China, has evaded all efforts to contain it, decimating Florida's citrus industry and forcing scores of growers out of business.....doused the trees with a novel pesticide: antibiotics used to treat syphilis, tuberculosis, urinary tract infections and a number of other illnesses in humans....streptomycin and oxytetracycline....the EPA is now significantly expanding their permitted use across 764,000 acres in California, Texas and other citrus-producing states....The European Union has banned the agricultural use of streptomycin and oxytetracycline. So too has Brazil, where orange growers are battling the same bacterial scourge, called huanglongbing, commonly known as citrus greening disease....But scientists are especially worried that the drugs will cause pathogenic bacteria in the soil to become resistant to the compounds and then find their way to people through groundwater or contaminated food.....In deciding to approve two drugs for citrus trees, the EPA largely ignored objections from the CDC and FDA.'
Boycott the Chinese crotch-clown, Candidatus liberibacter, and the ship it came in on.
'Zolfo Springs, Florida -- A pernicious disease is eating away at Roy Petteway's orange trees. The bacterial infection, transmitted by a tiny winged insect from China, has evaded all efforts to contain it, decimating Florida's citrus industry and forcing scores of growers out of business.....doused the trees with a novel pesticide: antibiotics used to treat syphilis, tuberculosis, urinary tract infections and a number of other illnesses in humans....streptomycin and oxytetracycline....the EPA is now significantly expanding their permitted use across 764,000 acres in California, Texas and other citrus-producing states....The European Union has banned the agricultural use of streptomycin and oxytetracycline. So too has Brazil, where orange growers are battling the same bacterial scourge, called huanglongbing, commonly known as citrus greening disease....But scientists are especially worried that the drugs will cause pathogenic bacteria in the soil to become resistant to the compounds and then find their way to people through groundwater or contaminated food.....In deciding to approve two drugs for citrus trees, the EPA largely ignored objections from the CDC and FDA.'
Boycott the Chinese crotch-clown, Candidatus liberibacter, and the ship it came in on.