Who's Hogging Our Antibiotics?

Anti-drug posters are a mainstay of mass transit systems across the country. But this month Metro riders in Washington, D.C. -- particularly commuters who use the Capitol South and Union Station stops (in close proximity to Capitol Hill) -- are seeing cautionary ads that feature some unusual species of drug abusers: pigs, cows and chickens.

The advertising campaign, produced by the Pew Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming, is part of a national effort to ensure antibiotics remain effective by ending their misuse on factory farms.

Large industrial farming operations, where most of our food animals are raised in the United States, routinely mix human antibiotics with livestock feed to make them grow faster and to compensate for overcrowded, stressful and unsanitary conditions. While antibiotics are prescribed for people to treat short-term disease, these same critically important drugs are fed to herds or flocks of animals at low doses, often over their entire lives. In fact, the Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that 70 percent of all antibiotics used in this country are given to farm animals that are not sick.

This practice creates ideal conditions for the breeding of new and dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Bacteria acquire resistance to antibiotics through prolonged exposure to low doses. Their biological systems learn to recognize the chemical mechanisms that antibiotics use, develop defenses that resist or evade those mechanisms, then include those genetic traits as they reproduce -- spreading the drug resistance among entire bacterial colonies.

It is believed that these new, potentially deadly strains can then be transferred to humans in many ways including through the consumption and handling of contaminated meat, contact with infected farm workers and eating crops that have been contaminated by manure. Overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture has been directly connected to resistant campylobacter (the most common food borne illness that causes diarrhea, fever and abdominal cramping), E. coli and Salmonella. Research is now under way into whether super-bug MRSA infections also can be traced back to misuse of antibiotics by large-scale livestock feeding operations.

Each year 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths are caused by dangerous pathogens and bacteria such as E. Coli and Salmonella. They are particularly deadly in their antibiotic-resistant forms, because they are harder to treat and may require longer hospital stays before finally being eliminated.

The American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and other leading medical groups agree that the increase of dangerous bacteria that are resistant to antibiotic treatment is a looming public health challenge. And the misuse of antibiotics on industrial animal farms plays a significant role in this crisis.

Traditionally, large-scale farmers have argued that feeding antibiotics to livestock cuts their costs, making food cheaper for consumers. But recent economic analysis of the use of antibiotics in poultry production suggests that the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics is no bargain. In fact, data show that improving the management of farm animals (e.g., cleaning facilities more thoroughly and frequently) achieves the same benefits. Furthermore, antibiotic-resistant infections cost the U.S. health care system $4 to $5 billion per year.

It is important to note that this problem doesn't appear on all farms, or in all livestock operations. Many American farmers have found that consumers prefer meat, eggs and other products that are produced without antibiotics. Note, too, that the problem doesn't stem from giving antibiotics to animals that have bacterial illnesses requiring treatment. Instead, it's the misuse of the drugs that's to blame.

This summer, Congress will be weighing measures aimed at improving both health care and food safety. Thanks to these new "drug-abuse" posters, elected officials and staffers who take Washington's subway to work will have an opportunity to reflect on the ways that continued antibiotic misuse on factory farms could undermine that legislation, as well as endanger human health.

Comments

[LOCUTUS13]

If there were grass fed cattle ONLY the industry would use a fraction of antibiotics, hormones and other drugs they do today. It's because they feed cattle cheep corn.

[Vickster]

It's also because CAFOs keep their animals in filthy, overcrowded pens.

[mikeeber]

Great piece. A couple of comments: The figures of 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths you use are for food-related illnesses alone. Even if bacteria consumed from food do not immediately cause illness, they may cause serious problems in other ways. Drug-resistant bacteria from the food chain may replace the normal bacteria that colonize the human gut. If these resistant bacteria cause an infection at a later time, that infection may be very hard to treat. E. coli, a common foodborne pathogen, is responsible for up to 90% of all urinary tract infections and is a common cause of serious bloodstream infections. We need to be able to treat these infections. My point is that the impact of drug-resistant bacteria from food sources on human health isn't just about direct foodborne illness; the indirect impact from the spread of drug resistance is potentially huge.

Second, you claim that the problem of antibiotic resistance stems only from the misuse of antibiotics. But both appropriate use and inappropriate use in animals and humans encourages the development and spread of drug resistance. Explanations of the problem of drug resistance and potential incentive-based solutions are available at http://extendingthecure.org/

[Megson]

So much information that is not true! The antibiotics the article talked about are used in cattle when they are young and by the time they get to the feed yards most of it is out of their systems. A pregnant woman goes through thousands of hormones changes a day. A cow has about the amount of antibiotic residue as what you would find in a blade of grass in a football field - it is that small. This is an urban myth. I've read the Omnivore's Dilemma.
The fact remains that the U.S. has the safest food supply in the world. The beef industry was cited a few years ago when the e.coli spinach outback happened as the industry that has done the most to deal with food safety and health. So please give it a rest.

[mikeeber]

The latest issue of one of the most reputable infectious disease journals concludes: "It is very likely that a large proportion of the drug‐resistant strains of E. coli carried by people are acquired via food and especially food animals."

If antibiotic use in agriculture encourages the development of drug-resistant bacteria, and those bacteria are then consumed by people, it's largely irrelevant whether any antibiotics remain in the animals when they are consumed.

The link to the article in the infectious disease journal: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/599831

[Vickster]

Feedlot cattle can be fed antibiotics until 10 days before slaughter.

[cktirumalai]

In the earlier 1940s, only the privileged (but not all) in some parts of the world could get access to penicillin, then the Wonder Drug. As the years passed antibiotics became as freely available as aspirin today, and that was part of the problem. Patients asked for them too readily and doctors did not hesitate to prescribe them. Hence mutating bacteria and the antibiotic resistance you describe. The Wonder Drug no longer achieved its famed miracles as frequently. I imagine this is a continuing problem in pharmacology: how, when, and in what doses drugs are used. My own preference is for the smallest effective dose for the shortest possible time, with the qualification that once a course of antibiotics is begun it must be finished, even if the symptoms get milder. I do not ask for an antibiotic in the face of a troubling cold, unless it digs really deep into the bronchial tubes and deeper.

[CitizenT]

Anyone interested in learning more should read michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma". It is both very well written and informative.

[Unrepentant]

Excellent suggestion!