Antibiotic Resistance 101: How Antibiotic Misuse On Factory Farms Can Make You Sick
This report summarizes the current use of antibiotics in agriculture and the current and potential risks that this poses. Samples of meat sold in US grocery stores in 2012 were examined for the presence of antibiotic resistant (AR) bacteria. AR bacteria was found in all types of meat; further, the pathogen E. coli was common among the samples. The report argues that antibiotic use in agriculture presents a human health issue and proposes solutions such as having Congress pass the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act and banning the use of antibiotics in farm animals that do not have any current need for them.
Excerpt from Executive Summary:
“Both in the United States and worldwide, agriculture uses vastly more antibiotics than human medicine, and agriculture uses drugs from every major class of antibiotics used in human medicine. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reported in 2011 that 80 percent of antibiotics in the United States are sold for agricultural purposes.”
“[Antibiotic resistant (AR)] bacteria can spread from farm animals to humans via food, via animal-to-human transfer on farms and in rural areas, and through contaminated waste entering the environment (see infographic on pages 10 and 11). The most commonly affected are those with under-developed or compromised immune systems — pregnant women, children, the elderly and people with certain health conditions — but increasingly, AR bacteria have the potential to affect anyone.”
“The federal government’s National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS) collects samples of bacteria from chicken breasts, ground turkey, ground beef and pork chops and measures the presence of several drug-susceptible and AR foodborne pathogens.
Food & Water Watch has analyzed the 2010 NARMS data to estimate how widespread AR bacteria were as a whole in the retail meat samples collected. Some level of AR bacteria was common in all four meats. AR Salmonella was present in 8 percent of chicken breast samples and 11 percent of ground turkey samples. The presence of AR E. coli in the samples collected varied widely: 66 percent in ground turkey, 52 percent in chicken breasts, 20 percent in pork chops and 14 percent in ground beef.”