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Animal Farms Are Pumping Up Superbugs
oxide7 writes "The philosopher Frederick Nietzsche once famously said, 'That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.' That may or may not be true for human beings, but it is certainly true for bacteria. The superbugs are among us and they are not leaving. Indeed, they are growing stronger. 'The problem is that the animal agriculture industry makes massive use of low-dose antibiotics for growth promotion and in place of effective infection prevention methods,' Young said, adding that the farm animal population is much larger than the human population. The low-dose antibiotics do not kill the disease. They make the disease stronger, more resistant to those and other antibiotics. The animals — the cattle, pigs and chickens — thus treated become superbug factories. The diseases stay in them and they wash off them to infect the surrounding environment."
The article is about proposed regulation stuck in committee to stop it. So apparently it's news for you at least.
is the International Business Times an authority on anything. I'd never even heard from them before today.
/. fell for it.
Additionally, as someone with a doctorate in animal science and a researcher in the field, I have to say that the case against animal agriculture is overstated. No one will argue that they don't contribute, but the relative importance of antibiotic use in animals (that less than 1% of the population ever come into contact with while they are alive) relative to that of rampant, large-dose, antibiotic abuses in hospitals (You know where all of those sick people hang out, transferring infections back and forth) has never been ascertained empirically.
First, the vast majority of the bacterial species that live in livestock are not capable of living in people. Therefore, the rate of resistance transfer from animal bacteria to human bacteria is relatively low. Evidence exists that these species can, and do transfer resistance gene between eachother. However, the majority of the evidence is "Resistance gene A is present in pig bacteria and human bacteria, and genes are essentially identical, therefore the gene came from animals!" This of course, completely ignores the possiblity that the gene arose to prominence in the human population and then was transferred to a pig via a farm worker that was a carrier. Talk about placing the cart in front of horse.
Second, low levels of antibiotic use in the swine industry is usually only during the first month after weaning. Pigs are weaned at between 18 and 24 days on most farms in order to prevent the sow (aka "Mom") from transmitting certain diseases to the piglets that have little effect on adult animals, but can kill piglets very easily. At this age the maternal antibodies from the colostrum are starting to wear off, but the piglets own acquired immune system is not completely up to the task. Therefore the antibiotics buy the piglets time by reducing the overall microbial load in the intestine, and coincidentally increasing the efficiency of feed utilization (which is good for the environment). Many farms then discontinue the use of prophylactic, or growth promoting antibiotics because antibiotics cost money and feed costs can account for 60-70% of total production overhead. Expensive feed can drive you out of business in a hurry.
Third, to all those bragging about being from the EU, where there is a total ban on prophylactic antibiotics a word of caution. The total amount of antibiotics used in EU agriculture is not actually lower than it was before the ban. The difference is that instead of giving antibiotics to prevent infection, and improve production they are now given to tread disease outbreaks that wouldn't of otherwise happened and to try and minimize reductions in production. Also, the antibiotics of most relevance to human medicine are not routinely used for growth promotion, but they are used to treat disease outbreaks. So, the total tonnage of antibiotics being administered has not really gone down (it did until they banned them in the nursery which was the last phase of the ban), and the antibiotics being used are MORE likely to also be used in human medicine. Bravo, talk about unintended consequences!
Finally, I fail to see how this made the front page here. It is not the usual fare of geek (no computers anywhere), it is not actually news (this controversy has been around for at least a decade), this article contributed nothing new to the discussion (restates already rampant FUD), and the IBTimes are not exactly the NYTimes or LATimes. The only thing I can see in its favor is that it lets the ignorant "Organic" group say I told you so without any real technical points for those few of us in the field to respond to. The original article is link-bait, plain and simple and
Pathetic
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
We are both partially right. From http://www.fao.org/docrep/article/agrippa/555_en.htm
According to the National Office of Animal Health (NOAH, 2001), antibiotic growth promoters are used to "help growing animals digest their food more efficiently, get maximum benefit from it and allow them to develop into strong and healthy individuals". Although the mechanism underpinning their action is unclear, t is believed that the antibiotics suppress sensitive populations of bacteria in the intestines. It has been estimated that as much as 6 per cent of the net energy in the pig diet could be lost due to microbial fermentation in the intestine (Jensen, 1998). If the microbial population could be better controlled, it is possible that the lost energy could be diverted to growth.
Thomke & Elwinger (1998) hypothesize that cytokines released during the immune response may also stimulate the release of catabolic hormones, which would reduce muscle mass. Therefore a reduction in gastrointestinal infections would result in the subsequent increase in muscle weight. Whatever the mechanism of action, the result of the use of growth promoters is an improvement in daily growth rates between 1 and 10 per cent resulting in meat of a better quality, with less fat and increased protein content. There can be no doubt that growth promoters are effective; Prescott & Baggot (1993), however, sho ed that the effects of growth promoters were much more noticeable in sick animals and those housed in cramped, unhygienic conditions.
Currently, there is controversy surrounding the use of growth promoters for animals destined for meat production, as overuse of any antibiotic over a period of time may lead to the local bacterial populations becoming resistant to the antibiotic. This is it not an invariable rule: Streptococcus pyogenes remains sensitive to penicillins after over sixty years of clinical use but such examples are, however, very rare. Undoubtedly, the medical exploitation of antimicrobial chemotherapy, particularly to treat human infections, has imposed an enormous selection pressure on formerly sensitive bacteria to acquire genetic elements that code for resistance to antibiotics.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Conventional wisdom agrees with you, but the evidence does not. Denmark has had a ban on growth promoting antibiotics for almost a decade now, with the rest of the EU having followed suit only a couple of years later. Several antibiotics that have been approved for use the US were never approved for use in the EU for agriculture. However, they were approved for use in humans. DANMAP is the danish antibiotic use and resistance tracking program that was developed to ensure compliance and track the ban's effect. I can't remember off the top of my head, but for several of those antibiotics that were never approved for animals, but were in humans, the resistance levels are higher in Denmark, then they are in the US where agriculture has been using them alongside human medicine. It appears as though many antibiotic resistance genes have no negative value in the absence of selective pressure, which goes a long way toward explaining the generally higher resistance levels in some EU member nations relative to the US.
This is a very important and complex issue, and FUD articles like the IBTimes one are not helpful. They stir up the general populace to act without considering the evidence that already exists. The EU ban has not been effective at its stated goal of reducing resistance prevalence in the human population. I think that a ban that excludes the nursery phase would be more appropriate if not a complete repeal of the ban. But that's just based on my own interpretation of the scientific literature (as opposed to the financial literature, or populist literature). You can agree with me or not, it won't affect my research.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
>>>Spanish Influenza pandemic (1918) killed more people than the Bubonic Plague did in four, from 1347 to 1351.
It's all relative. The 1918 flu killed 3% of the population while the 1348 Black Death killed 45% of Europe and 20% of the world. If WE were hit by some disease with the same mortality as the 1348 bubonic, then 1400 million people would be dead. - Or if it had the same localized impact as it had in 1348, killing 45% of a continent, then 200 million North Americans would need to be buried
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Influenza is a viral infection, not a bacteriological one. Antibiotics will do absolutely nothng against a viral disease.
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