Most people know the story by now; antibiotic overuse is causing superbugs to run rampant and risk making this vital disease defense useless. Doctors are over-prescribing, patients are misusing, slewing antibiotics everywhere causing a whole big mess of… 30% of total antibiotic use. What? Yes. Human usage accounts for only about 30% of all used antibiotics, with the large remaining majority of antibiotic products being used in farm animals. The agriculture industry, like many industries, is quite imperfect in its operations, and vast quantities of antibiotics are used one as a preventative measure of disease for animals, but also in sub-therapeutic doses as a means of promoting growth. The mechanism for this is not largely understood, but likely has to do with killing off bacteria that could steal even a morsel of food from the animal, allowing them to fatten up faster than their microbiota-infused counterparts. No, it doesn’t directly impact humans as quickly as misuse in humans, but it is still a big problem.
This Wired article meanders a bit before getting to the point, but it does do a good job of summarizing the threat caused by this practice. Besides the obvious point of diseases that can affect both animals and humans quickly becoming resistant when faced with constant high levels of antibiotic use, these resistant bacteria can also pass along these resistance genes to other bacteria that may not impact the animal, but does impact humans. This use has created resistance to antibiotics that were not even previously on the radar as ones that were being resisted, with the source being resistant bacteria in livestock transferring genes. This means that even though we are very much part of the problem in our own consumption, we are pushing the metaphorical snowball of antibiotic resistance along much faster by using them recklessly on animals.
While the obvious solution seems to be make antibiotic use in animals illegal, that creates an unsurprising messy web of problems that must be dealt with. First of all, resistance is popping up the fastest in places where use is highest, which seems like the obvious place to start. However, these are most often areas where the use is high because the demand is high. These are areas that desperately need the food, and likely would prioritize immediate needs over global public health. Second, it doesn’t seem like there are currently many good alternatives. If antibiotic use were to stop cold turkey, disease and reduced growth would cut a sizable hole in productivity. This c&en article discusses some alternatives in the process of development, but given the language of the article that in order to meet the current effectiveness of antibiotics in production, there would be a much higher cost associated with the remedies involved, among them being probiotic promotion and new vaccines. This is obvious, as antibiotic overuse wouldn’t be a problem if there was an easy solution sitting on our lap. More research needs to be done before these solutions can be rolled out, so cold turkey doesn’t seem like a viable option. For now, I think cooling the turkey as much as each producer can within their means is the best we can do, while diligently keeping an ear out for developing research.
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