Here's a regulatory move that I think everyone except industrial livestock farmers can applaud: the federal government is considering restricting the indiscriminate use of antibiotics in livestock.
But Megan, you will say, government regulation! Nanny state! Ecofreaks!
To me, restricting antibiotic use is a legitimate public health measure. Antibiotics have been responsible for much of the increase in human lifespan over the last century, as well as dramatic improvements in the quality of our years. But they have a real collective action problem: the more they're used, the more bacteria resist them.
Cheap meat is not worth having your kid die of an antibiotic-resistant infection. Farmers use these things indiscriminately because it allows them to pack the animals into filthy conditions that would otherwise make the animals very, very sick.
Obviously, for someone like me who is basically opposed to factory farming, the tradeoff seems even less compelling than for someone who likes to pack in a Tyson's chicken every other day. But even if you're a big fan of treating animals like widgets, I don't see any way that somewhat cheaper meat is worth the risk of returning to an era when the president's son could die of an infected blister he picked up playing tennis. It is possible to have a perfectly rich and fulfilling life without eating most of a pound of meat every day. On the other hand, the world pre-antibiotics really was visibly much grimmer.
Copyright © 2010 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
The farm lobby defanged the climate change bill, and I'm pretty sure they'll do the same to this. It's a pipe dream.
I think the lobby that defanged that bill was the "I don't want to pay more for gas" lobby.
Excellent post! I'm a strong believer in limited government, but there's an obvious role for it to deal with externalities. The externalities are huge with antibiotics.
There's still a big problem with the inefficient use of antibiotics for treating people in other countries (and in the US), but that will be harder to deal with. This step alone will buy us some time. It's worth paying more for our meat in order to get that time (particularly given the threat to innovation from the proposed healthcare changes), and if it also means that animals are treated more humanely, so much the better!
It's a great idea in concept and I have vast concerns about how it'll be employed.
There is a strong case for making the sale of anti-biotic products to consumers much more limited. We have no need for anti-biotic hand soaps, wipes, etc.....there are simple chemical compounds (i.e. lye in soap) that will destroy the cell structure of those bacteria instead. Further, an anti-bacterial does not hurt the common cold (viral based), now does it?
But our homes are flooded with anti-bacterial soaps and wipes. Time to get rid of those.
There is a very limited case for everyday products containing anti-bacterials. For instance, my TOTAL toothpaste contains triclosan. It appears to do a seriously good job at limiting the growth of bacterial decay in my mouth and the mouths of many others with a 2x a day brushing. Now you might just say "Ok, you are exchanging cavities for possibly resistant bacteria"....which is fair, but bear in mind that many mouth diseases (i.e. gum disease) are linked with heart diseases (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090709140822.htm)
This stuff needs to be very carefully regulated, so that it's not another ban of incandesant light bulbs. Which looks like it might be reversed within 5 years.
Joe
5-chloro-2-(2,4-dichlorophenoxy)phenol) is probably safe for you, unless you live somewhere like Ohio where the water is heavily chlorinated, but why do you hate the bullfrogs?
Much better to brush with something less persistent in the water supply & not banned in Sweden. I use vodke.
My concern is not with the people who would now afford 3/4 of a pound of daily meat instead of a pound, but with those who will not be able to afford any instead of what little they can now. Obviously I'm describing the developing world, and I don't know how much an increase in the US price of beef will affect their prices. Still its worthwhile to compare the numbers that will starve due to more expansive food vs the numbers that will die from really nasty disease.
Not being able to afford meat and not being able to afford food are two completely seperate issues. A very large portion of rural China survives largely without eating any meat, with the exception of a few holidays per year. In fact, you could argue that lower meat consumption will lead to lower prices for food staples as said staples will no longer be used to feed animals.
I think Ken's concerns are a bit off the mark. Food in the western world today is remarkably cheap, and the "poor" tend to be merely less affluent than actually honest-to-goodness poor. Realistically higher meat prices would not mean people start buying less meat, nor would it mean that people would starve. The minimum cost of a subsistence diet will almost certainly remain unchanged (and very, very low), given that such a diet is already lean on meat (check the price per lb of rice, beans, or flour vs. ground beef). For most folks, including the nominal "poor", higher meat prices would probably mean people stick to cheaper cuts of meat or forgo the occasional starbucks or iTunes expenditure. Ken makes it seem as though some sizeable portion of the population were budgeted so tightly that a single dollar change here or there would make he difference between survival or starvation, and that is simply unreality.
If you are talking about the western world, you are absolutely correct. Even a doubling of the price of beef is unlikely to cause any starvation.
However, the markets being global, the price of beef in the states has to affect the price of beef in the developing world. I don't know by how much, but I do know that a rise in the price of beef in the developing world will cause malnutrition and starvation.
Ken, I simply don't have enough information to know if this is a valid point. Yes, markets are global. But are average people in third world countries buying American beef and chicken? Or are these products being sold to mostly advanced nations?
And how much of that beef going to third-world countries is aid as opposed to trade?
http://www.usmef.org/TradeLibrary/Statistics.asp
The US is selling huge amounts of pork, mostly to Japan, Mexico & China.
Beef is still slowly recovering from 2004, and the failure to institute 100% mad cow testing.
Zic: I don't have that information either. I do know that markets tend to work in oddball ways where consequences are hard to predict. It is not at all unusual to have different commodities affecting each others price when they have no obvious relationship. I would not be the least surprised to find out that our using less beef has raised or lowered the price of some grain in some country that does not trade with us at all. Its all a bunch of interconnected strings, and when you pull on one, all of them move.
I will be more surprised to find out that the rest of the world is unaffected by our changing prices. It may not be a huge effect, or it could be. All I'm saying is that it needs to be compared.
The simplest mechanism I can think off is that our higher food prices will cause countries that have previously not exported food to us, to export to us (since its more profitable) and then a third set of countries to export to the countries that are now exporting to us and so on and so forth
I may be a serious global warming sceptic but I am also a huge anti-pollution believer. The antibiotics and hormones that are used in the "meat" industry not only contaminate themselves but are also having a profound impact on the water supply. Some of the chemicals used do not break down in the water cycle and are not filterable. Add in all the other really nasty chemicals and heavy metals we use for batteries, air bags, pharmaceuticals (you take a pill, piss out most of the active ingredient and it ends up in the water - some of the birth control compounds are also building up) and manufacturing and you have some serious jungle juice brewing in our aquifers and lakes.
Drew - The levels of almost all compounds in water are unbelievably low. As in "Yes I can find that compound in the water but not anywhere near the levels in which it would cause any human systemic reaction".
The human body is remarkably resilient to slow dosing of almost anything.
I'm personally more worried about the balsamic vinegar I store in a glazed ceramic jar on my dining room table. The glazing almost certainly contains lead, and the acid in the vinegar will leach it. Home lead test, anyone?
Hi Drew,
You might become a climate change agnostic if you stopped using the term global warming? At least if you are interested in the science side of things and not the mere politics with all the projections behind it. "Serious" scientists and not Steve the blogger, for example, will tell you that some regions might get colder and they have therefore dropped the term. It is only "some" politicians and ideological journalists who feel the need to continue using it for obvious reasons.
Question - do you slightly believe in ozone depletion and its CO2 equivalent CFCs? How would you have reacted as a politician after the theory of a dangerously increasing ozone whole was proposed by the scientific community in 1974?
Here is an interesting summary regarding the "serious ozone whole skeptics" and a first quote:
So the lesson here is that skepticism is bad? I believe advocates dropped the term global warming when it became clear that more scary scenarios were needed to convince the public that immediate action is needed, right now! We're gonna burn up!, and then drown!, and finally freeze! Quick, call Al Gore the movie maker (and carbon trader)!
rsbsail
I believe that the lesson here is: skepticism is good - it happens all the time when scientific theories get reviewed by peers. The scientists were really certain when they presented the ozone whole theory in 1974 after they have gone through round after round of scientific skepticism.
When skeptics use unscientific, political and ideological arguments to counter science (e.g. creationism) - that's when skepticism gets bad, no? I believe that the "bad" skepticism stems from too much believe or confidence is some other, usually also misinterpreted, ideas and ideals and not from being sceptic of the science at hand.
The case study above also shows how much more costly it is in reality and not theory to postpone countermeasures. The case study above also shows that it really has to hit and hurt us before we move. Climate change is not acid rain or ozone depletion - it is worse. Maybe it is time to stop equating scientists with alarmists. It might well be that the scientists who discovers a cure against cancer also intended to make money or become famous - nevertheless, he saves lives. In my book - he would only be shady if he wanted for cancer to grow so that he can make money. That might be almost as bad as a tobacco producer or consumer refusing to at least acknowledge the correlation to cancer?
I'm electrical engineer and spend a good portion of my day building mathematical models of complex digital to analog transformations and the reverse. From my education and personal experience I know that modeling real-world response on a wire to a given electrical impulse is extremely complex and there are still aspects of electron theory that are exactly that, theory.
So when I hear climatologists say that they can model global climate accurately I laugh. The global ecosystem is too complex. So all they can do is make assumptions and try to make their model fit the curve. As an engineer I can tell you that fitting the curve is a surefire way to make a bad model. That's why I'm a skeptic of climate science.
RE: "The case study above also shows how much more costly it is in reality and not theory to postpone countermeasures."
Only if you limit what you look at to cases where the skeptics where proven wrong. Many claims of health risks or severe environmental damage are questionable at best and its can be less costly to postpone countermeasures indefinitely. Even with CFCs skepticism about it being a severe problem was not unreasonable early on. Acting before solid evidence is in means you will often act when you don't have to, and create costs, and not always just economic costs, but also in some cases extra environmental costs (for example HFCs are a greenhouse gas, and fuel oxygenation requirements lead to increased use of MTBE which contaminates ground water)
Also Carbon/CO2 isn't CFCs. CFCs had fairly wide spread use but nor nearly as widespread as the category of "contributes to CO2 emissions" which is most of our economy. Also CFCs had replacements available, the replacements where more expensive, and cause some other problems, but at least there was something else to use. Even if the fears of those pushing global warming/climate change have some resemblance to reality the net cost of rushing a solution could be higher than not doing so.
Initially antibiotics have been used for what Megan has described as packing animals into filthy conditions that would otherwise make the animals very, very sick. But the industry has discovered an interesting side effect that has actually become a core argument for constant antibiotics over the last few decades.
Antibiotics act as growth promoters. Now the industry makes more money from rapid growth due to antibiotics than it could save from veterinary expenses. Therefore the whole reform thing will remain a consideration only. The health of our children and animals is important - but no quite as much as the heavenly taste of cheap stakes. Want always comes before need. Do you want the house you fancy or the house you can afford?
Of course there are alternatives that can be used as growth promoters but the livestock industry is the last one on the planet that likes being told what to do or how to do things better. If left to their own devices they historically make things worse for everybody. Not because they are bad people - but because they mistakenly believe that their existence is under threat while themselves being their only real problem. They are not just digging our while deeper - they digging their own wholes deeper and those few who would actually really want to help them - not with symptoms but the cause - are perceived as "us vs them".
Go read some trade-journals - I don't know how many industry heads have started using the term "war". Obama will hence not get this through if he cannot even ask the biggest climate change polluter on the planet to at least monitor their waste. Via the Washington Post: For the Farm Lobby, Too Much Is Never Enough
Antibiotics are also exempt from many "organic" certificates in the US and EU by the way. Organic means that the feed is not supposed to have added antibiotics. But most certificates obviously allow for medicine in case the animal gets sick. A nice loophole that is not being monitored and that many exploit somewhat? Many humane, free-range farms I have seen are using antibiotics constantly.
On a positive side - take bovine growth hormones via dairy and antibiotics via meat and we have a growth hormone cocktail that will produce better and better basketball players every year. Cheap unsustainable stakes and taller basketball - who cares about an injury here or there?
Steaks
In most dirt poor places I've visited(e.g.Cambodia), people generally cultivate their own livestock(e.g. chickens,goats,etc.). Or they may purchase or trade at a local market from other people in town. So, I don't see how this could cause 3rd world starvation, unless I'm missing something. But maybe you're thinking more of here in the U.S. or other more developed countries where people in the city don't generally 'grow' their own food. But I guess that's what 'mystery meat' is for.
Anyhow, I wish doctors wouldn't be so lax in using antibiotics for the common cold(as someone suggested above). They of all people, should be aware of the potential harm. And yet many still do it.
People who are against anti-biotics are of the same character as people who think vaccines cause autism.
They are essentially anti-science. Some of them are anti-development. They are all anti-progress. Most of them are also in the global warming camp as well, and desire to undo most of the industrial revolution. They rarely admit this, even to themselves.
For most of them it eventually transcends the realm of knowledge and becomes a moral question. Sometimes I feel quite certain they will wake up and declare artificial lighting the work of the evil.
- Jay
Jay:
I don't think this is a case of being against anti-biotics. Rather its a case for the responsible use of anti-biotics, simular to the case of "you need to take all your anti-biotics when you are sick and not stop just because you start to feel better". It goes a step further to say that "if you cannot use anti biotics responsibly, you should not be able to use them at all", and also assuming that feedlots cannot use anti biotics responsibly.
There are some questionable assumptions, and it may be going too far, but it is not anti-development.
But some its supporters are, I'm sure.
There is nothing irresponsible about the way farmers are using antibiotics.
When one animal gets sick it can quickly spread to half the herd. Then you have 200 infected animals or more, roughly 200 times as large a culture to incubate and evolve the pathogen in.
Then to make matters worse you end up giving the infected cows the antibiotic anyway. The difference is that you now have a bunch of dead animals, a bunch of sick animals, and something like 200 times the chance of having developed a resistant strain.
Most farmers work closely with the county extension offices and the state university's agricultural programs. Many of them have bachlor degrees in agriculture. It in insane to believe they know or care less about the health of their herd and care and care less about their herds long term health and viability than a bunch of pale SWPL vegans who have probably never even seen a seen a cow, let alone raised a herd of them.
Many people -seriously- underestimate the difficulties of raising cattle and the benefits of modern agricultural practices. They mistake their ignorance for knowledge.
What strikes me most though, is that they are fundamentally not interested in empirical results. "It is better of being natural and that is that". It is a knee jerk response, based on nothing. Their instinct is that it doesn't work. They are instinctively anti-science.
Jay, the problem here is that say that people who want to restrict the use of antibiotics in livestock are "anti-science" and then you proceed to make an argument that's the exact opposite of the one being made in the scientific community.
The bottom line is that the more you use an antibiotic, the more you facilitate the development of antibiotic resistant bacteria. McArdle's point is that's a reasonable risk/sacrifice when you're providing for the health of a human, but not one we're willing to take for animal health.
Peter,
It is not the "exact opposite of the one being made in the scientific community."
There is no such consensus, not even remotely. It does perhaps go against the narrative of a particular subset of the political community that frequently (and wrongly) claims the mantle of science.
There are many, pharmacists, scientists, vets and agriculturalists that study the way to maximize health and production of livestock. You can get a PhD in agriculture. These are the real scientists and they have real results.
Don't be so quick to discount them.
Jay:
My anti-science SWPL vegan mind wants to know who pays for your astroturf. However little you make, it's too much. You have to be *much* smarter to channel Rand in a convincing way.
The "anti-science" side of this argument worries about the evolution of antibiotic resistant bacteria, and the resulting problems treating humans with those bacteria. We anti-technology SWPL vegans have this superstition that sometimes, pathogens can move from animals to humans, or can even move from a farm where they've evolved to someone's house, and from there to a hospital. Our silly disdain of empirical results causes a knee-jerk reaction, when we read of increasing numbers of antibiotic resistant bacterial infections making people very sick in hospitals. Our lack of interest in highly educated and capable professionals leads us to suspect that, if doctors worry about drug resistance from overprescribing antibiotics in humans, the same concern almost certainly must apply to animals.
There may be very good arguments against banning the massive use of antibiotics in animals. (For example, is there some reason to believe that antibiotic resistance never arises in farm animals? It's hard to see how that would work, but I don't know enough to be sure. Similarly, is there some evidence that such bacteria never make their way into humans?) But you haven't made them.
Uh, no, Jay. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are a major problem in modern hospitals; I work at one. We are all very concerned. People are dying right now from superbugs they picked up at hospitals.
That said, I don't think I agree with Megan's point. Like so many modern problems, the solution isn't going to be, Try to do less of the same. Try to use less carbon, try to use less energy, try to use less antibiotics. That will just kill us slower. The solution to all these kinds of problems will be something new that makes the problem irrelevant. In the case of antibiotics, I expect that the next decade will see a list of new drugs that kill bugs in very focussed ways that the bugs can't get around.
So your point is that ranching should use antibiotics more like hospitals do because it's a problem at hospitals.
I think you need to re-examine the logic that lead you to make that statement.
I agree with your second paragraph completely. Also consider that we are developing new antibiotics. I would argue that we are developing new antibiotics faster than the pathogens are evolving new immunities.
Doubting our ability to develop new techniques to changing circumstances and forcing us to cling to our ever weakening arsenal is just another face of the anti-science mindset.
I would argue that we are developing new antibiotics faster than the pathogens are evolving new immunities.
I disagree vehemently. The overall consensus of the academic and industrial medicinal chemistry community is that antibiotic research is very, very underfunded.
They may be underfunded, but even if they were, it does not therefor follow that my statement was incorrect, so you have not stated your reasoning for disagreeing.
I'm always in favor of increasing funding towards more and better antibiotics. We can agree on that!
Pathogens are evolving new immunities really, really quickly -- new antibiotic research in pharma is almost non-existent.
The story going around (about the oxazolidinone antibiotics, I think) is that resistant strains were popping up not during the early years on the market, but during Phase III clinical trials.
Obviously, we are in agreement about more and better antibiotics...
This is an assertion without a link, but it is my general sense that most veterinary antibiotics are not the same as prescribed antibiotics. For example, I am not aware that monensin is used in humans, but it is quite commonly used in beef and dairy cattle.
That being said, there are cases where farms have used human antibiotics, such as the fluoroquinolones. That, to me, seems unwise.
I would really love an expert to weigh in on this.
Hi Megan,
Your concern is a valid one; however, the solution here is not to advocate for more regulation, it is to realize that the practices which lead to feedlot livestock cultivation result *because* of regulation. Specifically, feedlot practices are made cost effective because feed (corn, etc) is subsidized. If you removed grain subisidies, pasture farming would return. Today the amount of land required to grow enough corn to sustain a feedlot could also raise the comparable number of beef cattle if it was reverted to pasture land. The only reason it is not is because the price of corn is held artificially low by the subsidy.
I wrote about this very issue here: http://crucibleandcolumn.blogspot.com/2009/01/distortions-due-to-subsidies-and.html
Regards,
Kendall Justiniano
Annoyingly but not unexpectedly, the NYT article cited does not give details. Following Klug, there would seem to be an obvious compromise which bans antibiotics used in humans.
We need to take a serious look at food subsidies in general. But we won't. So we'll continue rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
You know, there are other more libertarian ways to go about reducing the use of antibiotics in livestock. Our crop subsidies do a lot to encourage factory farming, and doing away with those would significantly reduce the amount of factoring farming done in this country, and by extention would reduce the amount of antibiotics given to animals. I wrote an article about this in Splice Today where I discussed research that suggests that most if not all of the rise in factory farming of pigs over the last few decades has been due to corn and soy subsidies.
BEFORE we go and regulate an entire industry, thus imposing our lifestyle choices on others, perhaps Megan can post some data re: infections that aren't responding to antibiotics because the patient eats too much Tyson chicken?
If we want to demand ethical treatment for animals, let's have the courage to do it directly.
If this is about people dying because of eating too many antibiotics in their meat, then we'd better d@mned well have data to support the claim.
Classic example of visceral versus cerebral...
Its not about people getting too much antibiotics in their meat, its about bacteria that affect both animals and humans getting more resistant to antibiotics due to greater exposure.
I agree with RobM1981. Where’s the evidence that the use of antibiotics in U.S. livestock production has created antibiotic-resistant bacteria that are harmful to human?
Yes, I know that we’ve had bacteria that are resistant to certain forms of antibiotics but my understanding is that it the likely cause of this is over-use of antibiotics by humans. The push for regulating the use of antibiotics in livestock, much like the opposition to rBST in dairy cows, has largely been driven by animal welfare concerns occasionally cloaked in “concerns” over possible effects on human health (even when some concerns were shown to be dubious at best).
As far as why I’d oppose a new federal regulation that would require that only a veterinarian be able to administer antibiotics to livestock, there is a shortage of licensed veterinarians in rural areas and they’re overworked as it is. If you create a new law that says that they and only they can administer antibiotics (something that currently most farmers can do on their own) then something else is going to fall by the wayside just like every time someone passes a law that makes new demands on someone’s time.
Also just as new regulations disproportionately affect small businesses, smaller farms will have greater costs from the new mandate than the larger farms. Which means more smaller farms go under than would otherwise and livestock production operations end up consolidating to larger scales than they otherwise would have.
So yes, in addition to higher meat prices (which will of course disproportionally hit poorer consumers), this legislation will likely also create new hardships for smaller farms, lead to greater consolidation of farm sizes, and impose new burdens on already overworked rural veterinarians all for dubious actual benefit.
See my answer to your first question below.
"Where’s the evidence that the use of antibiotics in U.S. livestock production has created antibiotic-resistant bacteria that are harmful to human?"
Here's the research
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~fuchs/abr/
It's a pretty big problem since 70% of all antibiotics sold in the US are used in food animals. It's not just factory farms - it's the overuse of anti-biotics in hospitals as well.
"Smaller farms" have since stopped competing with large factory farms. There really aren't a lot of "small" factory farms. Smaller ranches and farms tend to specialize in organics or pasture raised where they can command enough of a premium for the product.
Brian,
Thanks for the data. I only had time to look at it, but it seems primarily to discuss "potential problems." There clearly are cases where resistance is seen, but it doesn't seem to warrant the kind of reaction we're discussing here.
Since I doubt Thorston you will wade through the links here's the abstract on a paper that covers your question.
http://www.ehponline.org/docs/2006/8837/abstract.html
The Potential Role of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations in Infectious Disease Epidemics and Antibiotic Resistance
Abstract
The industrialization of livestock production and the widespread use of nontherapeutic antimicrobial growth promotants has intensified the risk for the emergence of new, more virulent, or more resistant microorganisms. These have reduced the effectiveness of several classes of antibiotics for treating infections in humans and livestock. Recent outbreaks of virulent strains of influenza have arisen from swine and poultry raised in close proximity. This working group, which was part of the Conference on Environmental Health Impacts of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations: Anticipating Hazards—Searching for Solutions, considered the state of the science around these issues and concurred with the World Health Organization call for a phasing-out of the use of antimicrobial growth promotants for livestock and fish production. We also agree that all therapeutic antimicrobial agents should be available only by prescription for human and veterinary use. Concern about the risk of an influenza pandemic leads us to recommend that regulations be promulgated to restrict the co-location of swine and poultry concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) on the same site and to set appropriate separation distances.
Enough information for you?
Here's a link to the full paper.
http://www.ehponline.org/members/2006/8837/8837.html
BSD
Here's my assessment of the mini-review Brian found, as applied to Thorley's question. I'm used to reading scientific papers, but IANA veterinarian, I am a synthetic organic chemist. I am familiar with the journal, "Environmental Health Perspectives", which is the peer-reviewed journal published by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. I am not much of an environmentalist, but I have found their papers to be published by reputable authors and not overly alarmist, in most cases.
Thorley asks: "Where’s the evidence that the use of antibiotics in U.S. livestock production has created antibiotic-resistant bacteria that are harmful to human?"
If by harmful, Thorley means "people have died", the paper does not offer an example. If by harmful, Thorley means "people have had infections and gotten sick", the paper does not offer an example of this. However, the paper does offer examples of veterinary antibiotic-resistant bacteria being detectably transferred from animal to human and back to animals.
I believe that what experts fear are veterinary-antibiotic bacterial or viral infections that spread from animal to human that are not easily treatable by human-only antibiotics, e.g. vancomycin, a.k.a. the antibiotic of last resort. I believe it is true that bacteria will (through plasmids) spread their resistance to other strains of bacteria. I think public health types are concerned that CAFOs are a good place for these sorts of transmission issues to occur.
Those who support this regulation should acknowledge: 1) the scare tactics being used do not reflect what is in the scientific literature (e.g. the article titled "Deadly Dosing" in the first page of Google hits on this subject.) and 2) the direct economic costs that this will create: higher costs for the farmer, which will be passed onto the consumer. If you think cheap meat should be more expensive (and maybe it should be), you should come out and say so.
I wasn't very impressed by the paper either.
There is no study, there is no data. Where is the description of the experiment? What were the participating institutions? Where is the data? What, in summary, is the variable being measured, and what is the corrolation? There is none.
It is not even a good survey of findings.
It's a mini-review, which is basically a compilation and analysis of the work done by scientists so far. It is not meant to be a scientific paper.
As for whether or not it is a good survey, that I leave to the experts, i.e. not me.
Yes, but of the cited papers, only Levy and Hamscher even came close to supporting the conclusion, and they did so in an extremely limited sense, with no control group to compare Salmonella cases in a non-treated factory.
Virtually all the other sources, particularly UCS 2001, NAS 2003, and WHO 2003 were complete garbage, scientifically speaking. They were no better than reviews themselves, with no original source. At what point do we get some actually get some data?
You can get that by reading the articles cited by the review. There are several dealing with finding antibiotic resistant bacteria in areas surrounding high intensity farming operations, including one claiming to find MRSA at a pig farm.
The high level use of antibiotics in livestock operations is a legitimate concern. The antibiotics used might be different than those used in humans for several reasons such as some antibiotics aren't tolerated well by humans but are by livestock and vice versa. However, antibiotics are divided into classes depending on how they act on the bacteria. Resistance mechanisms in bacteria are capable of rendering entire classes of antibiotics useless. It is also a known fact that bacteria can trade genes between species, both closely and distantly related. So one can see bacterial resistance spreading from a livestock strain of bacteria into one that infects humans that is capable of resisting the antibiotics used in humans. There are also many species of bacteria that are capable of infecting both farm animals and humans E. coli O157:H7 anyone?
Now whether the government should get involved or not is another story, mostly because when the government gets involved the unintended consequences often outweigh the original risk.
Resistance mechanisms in bacteria are capable of rendering entire classes of antibiotics useless.
Ah! This is a helpful point. Look -- we're actually bringing out facts here! What next?!?
That being said, I'm curious as to how well mode-of-action correlates to molecular structural classes.
That being said, I'm curious as to how well mode-of-action correlates to molecular structural classes.
I may have misunderstood what you're asking here, but in veterinary pharmacology, drugs are generally considered according to their structural class. For example, there are many classes that interfere with bacterial protein synthesis, such as the tetracyclines or the macrolides, but they have different structures and are considered differently.
Resistance to tetracyclines may not confer resistance to macrolides, if, for example, resistance to due to a change at a binding site on the ribosome. If, however, resistance is due to a pump on the cell membrane, then resistance may even be cross-class.
That's exactly what I'm referring to, doobs. Thanks!
The problem is that most of the articles cited were either not science (CDC 2005, IDSA 2005, IOM 1998, NAS 2003, Nature 2005, UCS 2001, and WHO 2003) or were good science that did not lend support to the thesis (Aarestrup, Armand-Lefevre Levy, or Zahn).
One of the papers was from 1965; there hasn't been an apocalypse since then. To the contrary, new drugs have been developed and we have made net forward progress.
I am not sure that using an "apocalypse" is the standard we want to use in public health. The point is that antibiotics have a far shorter life cycles. The paper was a survey to give an overview. In a comment below I point to where you find original research and more importantly a two minute search at PubMed would find more. Just so we are clear you think the case that using massive amounts of antibiotics isn't a problem? Did you read a single survey paper and decide that?
Just so we are clear you think the case that using massive amounts of antibiotics isn't a problem?
The way it is currently being used in agriculture is not a problem and the restriction proposed in Megan's link is a bad idea.
Did you read a single survey paper and decide that?
I was commenting specifically on the one you posted, even to the point of naming the exact citations that were dubious.
Jay I wanted to find a survey that a lay person could read to get an overview of some of the research. My first link has primary research and opinion pieces mixed in. I tend to ignore the opinion pieces and go primary.
As far as raising costs go, it may not be as high as some fear.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11448495
In 1998 the Danes discountinued AGP in their broilers. The conclusion, "the feed-conversion ratio increased marginally 0.016 kg/kg and has remained at this level throughout the rest of the study period."
There is a ton of literature available in PubMed. If you wanna go whole hog on your research, I would suggest starting at the link above and looking at the related articles. You should remember that much of the use of antimicrobial growth promoters is predicated on the idea that animals won't be spending energy on strengthening an immune system. That's not a tested proposition to my mind. Some of the research on the Danish example showed a decrease in pathogens. The increased use of antibiotics also coincidended with a complete change in feeding practices in the last 30 years. It may be that increased production is more of function of those changes than the use of antibiotics.
Something just like that was cited in your first article, WHO 2003 I believe.
Let me just point out the obvious, in case it isn't obvious. The whole point of antibiotics is to reduce infection. The ones that do slip through may be more dangerous, but many fewer slip through. The cost to society is not (only) measured in the cost of raising livestock, but in the number of illnesses that get through and the severity and treatability of the illnesses that get through.
"Farmers use these things indiscriminately because it allows them to pack the animals into filthy conditions that would otherwise make the animals very, very sick."
Megan, with all due respect, this is much too broad a generalization about farmers. I recommend that you take the time to learn more about agriculture before you comment. Is it possible for you to spend some time in the Midwest where the pastures and feedlots are located and get a closer view of the process?
As the manager of our family farm in Iowa for a number of years, it is apparent to me that more and more farm families and communities are increasingly aware of the criticism by the non-farming public. Unfortunately, some of the criticism is misguided and reflects a gap in understanding that is more the fault of the consumer than the farmer. Unless consumers develop an understanding of the risks and challenges associated with agricuture, we will contine to have disagreements that fail to resolve the critical issue - safe and reasonably priced food for all.
I couldn't agree more. The use of antibiotics is certainly a double-edged sword.
I suspect it already is semi regulated as are the agricultural uses of them. By semi I mean someone is not watching over your sholder but you can only buy certain types of antibiotics for this use (and you can't get around that because other types are not sold in quanty or without perscriptions). The states also publish use rules and recommendations that explain why over use provides no benefits (but does have downsides).
I know more about the agricultural use of streptomycin but that case very very little is used compared to human use of antibiotics (less than 1% of all used per year), only a couple are allowed to be sold / used (thus preventing resistance by antibiotic class), and without them certain types of fruits would be almost impossible to grow (due to things like fireblight)... but people are against their use at all and site the same kinds of arguments.
I am basically a libertarian--but a practical one. There is some merit to this idea, but as Klug and others have pointed out, its not quite what its proponents would have us to believe. A lot of it is the bastardization of science to back up ideological goals.
If we really want to keep antibiotics effective, we should periodically confine the use of antibiotic X solely to hospitals for a period of Y years, and rotate them through the years. Pathogens that have developed an immunity will lose it over time if its not encountered. I really doubt that antibiotic resistant bacteria (that infect humans) are really the fault of livestock. Its the people who misuse them that have created the problem.
Do you really think that would be effective for a child with pneumonia or an eye infection? Rather, I think it would concentrate the use of antibiotics in the primary space known to breed resistance.
I'm fairly sure the cost of antibiotics will limit their usage. Cheaper less effective antibiotics are used on animals, more expensive more effective antibiotics are used on people. It's not exceptionally complicated. There is a certain ceiling on the amount a farmer is willing to spend on livestock.
Of course, this ignores the more prevalent problem of shoveling corn into a cows mouth and giving them antibiotics so they don't die from it.
If more people considered buying grass fed beef for a 50% premium the amount of antibiotics we use in meat production would drop dramatically.
Some forms of antibiotic resistance, such as improvement to cellular chemical pumps, confer resistance to a wide range of antibiotics.
What I'd like to see is increased use of bacteriophage. It's easy to develop new phage, and phage + antibiotics has been shown to dramatically decrease post-operative morbidity and mortality. It wouldn't solve antibiotic resistance since they still can't be used internally and are very specific (you basically need a cocktail) but it may take a bite out of it.
One problem is it's impossible to patent naturally occurring phage, so the economic incentive isn't quite there. Intralytix tried to develop and patent some injectible long-cycling phage, but I'm not sure whatever happened to them. I don't think they did it.