How The Meat Industry Contributes To Antibiotic Resistance

The cynical, easily news-fatigued among us are probably rather bored with being proverbially hit over the head with reports about antibiotic resistance by now. There's seemingly a new warning that the world is teetering on the edge of the post-antibiotic era each week, and if you are a healthy person who has not encountered an antibiotic-resistant bug (yet), these reports may not seem terribly relevant right now. 

Though antibiotic resistance is rising exponentially, the fact is that antibiotics are still available, and the odds are still overwhelmingly in your favor that antibiotics will work for you if you need them — for most bacterial infections, that is. That may change. Our children or their children may find themselves living in a world where simple infections can kill and now minor operations become high-risk, high-mortality procedures. We may be living in an era where new technology is being developed constantly, and 3-D printers, robotics, and nanotechnology can achieve things that would have been thought impossible just a few decades ago, but without antibiotics, we'd be back in the dark ages before long. If that sounds horrendously catastrophic, that's because it is. 

You've already heard the advice to make sure you only take antibiotics when they are prescribed by a doctor, to refrain from insisting on antibiotics for viral infections, to make sure that you finish any course of antibiotics you start, and to practice meticulous hand hygiene to lower your risk of acquiring a bacterial infection in the first place.

What's Up With Colistin?

In November 2015, a Lancet study reported that a mutation — the MCR-1 gene — was found in bacteria that makes them highly resistant not just to any antibiotic, but to Colistin, a "last-resort drug". These resistant bacteria was mostly found in pigs and poultry in China, but in rare cases also in humans. The resistant gene was first located on a pig farm in Shanghai four years ago, but there is evidence that it can easily be transferred between common bacteria, such as E coli and Klesbsiella pneumoniae. The research team said: "although currently confined to China, MCR-1 is likely to emulate other resistance genes ... and spread worldwide."

READ Overuse Of Drugs In Animal Farming Linked To Antibiotic Resistance In Humans

How did common bacteria become resistant to such a serious drug? The Lancet report estimates that around 12,000 tons of Colistin are purchased for use in agriculture on a yearly basis worldwide, and pigs in China are routinely given the drug. As a result of the report, the Chinese ministry of agriculture has said that it will now better monitor the use of Colistin.

Why Antibiotics In The Meat Industry Are A Problem, And What You Can Do About It

Antibiotics In The Meat Industry: The Shocking Facts

Colistin-resistant bacteria may be confined to China at the moment, but the routine use of antibiotics on healthy animals certainly isn't. You may be shocked to hear that 80 percent of all antibiotics sold in the US are intended for use on livestock and poultry — but that figure becomes even more terrifying when you add the fact that most of the animals to whom antibiotics are administered aren't sick at all. In the livestock industry, adding antibiotics to food and water in order to make animals grow faster and to prevent — not cure, but prevent — infections that could be caused by their appalling living conditions are routine practice. 

The routine use of antibiotics on healthy animals may kill off weak bacteria that healthy animals should be able to fight off anyway, but it also creates an environment in which more aggressive bacteria can thrive. In China, 20 percent of the investigated animals were found to carry resistant bacteria, but the same also held true for 15 percent of meat. Contact with such meat can pose a real threat to humans, but resistant bacteria may also be able to reach the wider population through contact with farmers. 

So, What Can Be Done?

The US Food and Drug Administration, the FDA, has approved the use of antibiotics in animals for the following purposes:

• Treating sick animals
• Disease control for a whole group of animals when a portion of the group has been proven to be sick
• Disease prevention for animals at risk of becoming ill (including, presumably, those whose living conditions make them more prone to illness
• The promotion of growth and weight gain

The FDA does gave guidelines in place, guidelines that suggest antibiotics should only be used on animals that are sick, and only under the watchful eye of a vet. Are guidelines enough, though? Policy makers in the Netherlands, my native country, don't think so. When I was a child, antibiotics were used on animals in a similar fashion in this country. Since then, however, the use of antibiotics to promote growth and weight gain has been banned strictly. Antibiotics can be administered to sick animals and to groups when some are already ill and the rest is deemed to be at risk, but the use of antibiotics in meat farming has declined over the past years, with the strong intention to bring it back even further.

Professor Laura Piddock, from the campaign group Antibiotic Action, takes this idea a step further. She told the BBC that the same antibiotics "should not be used in veterinary and human medicine".

READ Natural Antibiotics: Foods that Work as Antibiotics

Should you want to lobby for legislation that actively reduces the risk of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in your country, you can write to your government representative or engage in civil action, by signing the petition that the National Resources Defense Council has going at the moment for instance. You may also consider only buying antibiotic-free organic meat, or even becoming a vegetarian. In the US, products labeled "USDA Organic" or "No Antibiotics Administered" are products that do not contribute to the creation of a post-antibiotic world.