Antibiotics and Agribusiness
According to the Union of Concerned Scientists a staggering 24.6 million pounds of antibiotics are fed to farm animals in the U.S. annually,13.5 million pounds of which would already be illegal in the EU because of the risk they pose to public health.1 The mounting evidence of the dangers this antibiotic use presents has generated heated discussion, countless news articles, and pending legislation that we hope will begin to address these important issues.
The greatest threat from the present nontherapeutic use of antibiotics for livestock comes from the fact that the conditions on factory farms promote the growth of new super-pathogens like H1N1 and MRSA.2 Since industrial animals often have compromised immune systems already, nontherapeutic antibiotic use on cramped industrial farms creates the perfect environment for new, treatment-resistant diseases to emerge.
Solutions
Part of the solution is obvious enough: we need to alter farming methods so that fewer and ultimately no nontherapeutic drugs are needed. As New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof recently argued, we "need to curb the way modern agribusiness madly overuses antibiotics, leaving them ineffective for sick humans."3
As it turns out it's not necessarily a simple thing for a farmer to eliminate nontherapeutic antibiotic use, and each industry will need to address this issue differently and collectively to achieve lasting change. Consider the poultry industry where arguably the most dangerous use of antibiotics takes place. For upwards of 99 percent of the chickens and turkeys raised for meat, their very genetics have been altered in synchronization with the development of specialized drug-laced feeds.
As poultry breeders abandoned traditional breeding techniques and began engineering animals with the narrow aim of increasing growth rates and feed conversion, they also introduced a number of unwanted side effects, including weakened immune systems. The poultry industry is well aware of these problems, but instead of breeding healthy and slower-growing birds, its leaders have opted to "co-engineer" chickens and specialized feed to make unhealthy animals as productive as possible. For decades the poultry industry has used drugs in feed to compensate for immune deficiencies caused by their Frankenstein methods of breeding. The result is that to eliminate antibiotics on a large scale, the present methods of raising birds needs to be changed from their breeding on up.
In fact, even if consumers buy antibiotic-free, pastured chickens, they have no choice but to support the misuse of antibiotics. How so? The most pressing problem with the overuse of antimicrobials in poultry exists on breeder farms, not the farms on which the birds we eat are raised. Most people don't even know there are specialized "breeder" and "grower" farms, but this is a longstanding feature of the modern poultry industry. Historically this was advantageous because it allowed farmers to specialize in a particular area of production, but in today's industry it is unavoidable because the chickens and turkeys people eat are "dead end" animals incapable of producing viable offspring. The chickens and turkeys we eat today are conceived on breeder farms, hatched in specialized hatcheries, and then moved to separate grower farms. Unless you are buying a true heritage, standard-bred bird, even if you buy a chicken that had a relatively good life and was raised without drugs, that chicken's parents and grandparents and great-grand parents almost certainly spent their lives confined in factory farm breeding facilities. In these facilities the longer lives of the birds leads to an especially intense exposure to antibiotics and other antimicrobials.
Put simply, the public health risks posed by the use of antibiotics and antimicrobials in agriculture are symptoms of a larger problem: factory farming. The only sustainable solution is to change the way we eat and farm. In the meantime, Farm Forward supports new legislation that seeks to curb the use of nontherapeutic use of these drugs.
The need to eliminate this irresponsible use of antibiotics is one of many reasons that assisting husbandry-based farmers, like we do with Frank Reese, is so urgent. Frank's farming methods don't require that animal feed be doused with antibiotics. Unlike industrial birds, true heritage chickens and turkeys have not been aggressively engineered in ways that compromise their immune systems. Although it is rarely discussed, heritage genetics and the old-new husbandry skills that farmers like Frank preserve are crucial to breaking animal agriculture's addiction to these drugs.
Antibiotic Use 101
To clarify, there is no problem with selective antibiotic use on farms to treat individual animals. In fact, using antibiotics in this manner is an essential part of good animal husbandry. It is the "subtherapeutic" or "nontherapeutic" use of drugs that has created major risks to public health. If you have the opportunity to speak to local animal farmers to see if they meet your standards, there are two questions worth asking: 1) whether they use antibiotics or antimicrobials to treat individual animals when necessary, and 2) whether small amounts of these drugs are given to all of the animals on a one-time or ongoing basis (that is, subtherapeutically).
We surveyed media sources and found that many define nontherapeutic antibiotic use as "the practice of feeding antibiotics to healthy animals in order to increase overall productivity." That's mostly true, but here are some key points about the use of drugs on factory farms that we found to be lacking in most media sources:
It is the larger class of antimicrobial drugs, not simply antibiotics, that conscientious consumers want to avoid.
- A wide range of drugs are given to factory-farmed animals and antibiotics are just one class of drugs in the larger class of antimicrobial drugs.
- Antibiotics have attracted headlines because of the health risks they pose but other antimicrobial drugs may pose the same risks.
- Meat labeled "antibiotic free" may still come from animals given other drugs.
- The purchase of poultry labeled "antibiotic free" may still indirectly promote the use of antibiotics in order to sustain specialized breeder farms.
It's not always correct to say that nontherapeutic antimicrobial use involves giving drugs to "healthy animals."
- Animals on factory farms, in aquaculture, and on feedlots are often in a chronic state of ill health.
- In many cases, such as in the contemporary poultry industry, the very genetics of animals destines them to have inadequate immune systems.
- Antimicrobials are typically given to sickly animals in order to make them more profitable.
Antibiotic and antimicrobial-free meat is not necessarily more humane.
- Because the real problem is in the genetics of the animals and the crowded conditions under which they are raised, being drug-free does not guarantee good conditions for animals.
- There is some evidence that antimicrobial free poultry meat can come from farms where animals suffer more.
Recent Investigations and Reports
CBS Evening News recently aired the results of an important investigation into the use of antibiotics on America's factory farms. Watched by more than 7 million viewers, host Katie Couric made a compelling case against the "non-therapeutic" use of antibiotics.4
The CBS investigation focused on the problem of routine antibiotic use creating drug-resistant bacteria and featured commentary from former industrial farm employees and medical professionals. According to the investigation Batesville Arkansas is the site of an alarming number of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus cases (MRSA) and home to Pilgrim's Pride, one of the country's largest poultry producers (and subject of a long-term investigation of immigration violation5). Symptoms of MRSA range from mild skin irritations to deadly infections of the bloodstream. Significantly, MRSA is not limited to poultry factory farms. For example, the CBS investigation follows the spread of the bacteria to a hog farm in Oklahoma.
How widespread is MRSA infection? According to a University of Iowa Study a new strain of MRSA can be found in nearly three-quarters of hogs and nearly two-thirds of the workers on hog farms that administer antibiotics nontherapeutically in Iowa and Western Illinois. On antibiotic-free farms by contrast no MRSA was found.
While MRSA infections are a relatively new problem, the link between the nontherapeutic use of antimicrobials on factory farms and the resulting increase in treatment-resistant pathogens is old news. The PEW Commission's landmark report, Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America, included a highly critical review of antibiotic use, concluding that "[t]he use of low doses of antibiotics as food additives facilitates the rapid evolution and proliferation of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria."6 In his new book Eating Animals, Farm Forward board member Jonathan Safran Foer explains, "As far back as the late 1960s, scientists have warned against the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics in farmed-animals' feed. Today, institutions as diverse as the American Medical Association, the Centers for Disease Control, the Institute of Medicine (a division of the National Academy of Sciences), and the World Health Organization have linked nontherapeutic antibiotic use on factory farms with increased antimicrobial resistance and called for a ban."7
Despite the scientific consensus on the danger of nontherapeutic use of antibiotics and other antimicrobials, agribusiness publications such as PORK Magazine and the Bovine Veterinarian have attempted to deny the obvious.8 Thankfully, investigations like the one CBS aired last week are making this position increasingly untenable.
If you're concerned about the dangers posed by anti-microbial use on today's factory farms, perhaps it can serve as a motivation to reconsider what you eat. Moving meat from the center to the side of your plate, or off it all together, is a powerful way you can make a statement against the factory farm system. If you eat meat, take steps to obtain it from a farmer you know and trust.9 Sign up for our newsletter to learn more about the state of agriculture in America, and what you can do to promote a more healthy, humane, and sustainable food system.
- 1. "Hogging It! Estimates of Antimicrobial Abuse in Livestock," Union of Concerned Scientists, 2001 (accessed Feb. 22, 2010).
- 2. For discussion see Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals (New York: Little, Brown & Company, 2009) 139-143.
- 3. Nicholas D. Kristof, "The Spread of Superbugs," Opinion, The New York Times, March 6, 2010, (accessed March 9, 2010).
- 4. Benjamin Toff "Ratings: 'CBS Evening News' in Prime Time Averages 6.5 Million Viewers," New York Times, Media Decoder; Behind the Scenes, Between the Lines, (accessed Feb. 12, 2010).
- 5. Julia Preston, "Officials End Immigration Inquiry," New York Times, Dec. 31, 2001, (accessed February 22, 2010).
- 6. "Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America," The Pew Charitable Trusts, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Pew Commission on Industrial Animal Production, 17.
- 7. Jonathan Safran-Foer, Eating Animals (New York: Little, Brown & Company, 2009) 140-141.
- 8. "Key Facts Disagree with CBS Evening News," PORK Magazine, (accessed Feb. 11, 2010) AND Scott Hurd, DVM, PhD "Hurd responds to CBS antibiotic allegations," Bovine Veterinarian, (accessed Feb. 11, 2010).
- 9. Sustainable Table is a nonprofit whose mission is to celebrate local sustainable food, educate consumers on food-related issues, and work to build community through food. Their Eat Well Guide will customize suggestions for sustainable food shopping by zip code is available here.
