Antibiotics Are Losing their Effectiveness on Humans. Animals, Too.

Now, new evidence reveals that the reckless antibiotic use on animals is not just a threat to human health. Animal bacteria are quickly developing resistance that is rendering ineffective some of the antibiotics used on factory farms.

Gideon Weissman

Former Policy Analyst, Frontier Group

Administering millions of pounds of poorly-regulated antibiotics to animals at a time when antibiotic resistant infections are already killing tens of thousands of Americans is dangerous and reckless. Now, new evidence reveals that the reckless antibiotic use on animals is not just a threat to human health: Animal bacteria are quickly developing resistance that is rendering ineffective some of the antibiotics used on factory farms.

News from a recent beef cattle conference indicates that the cattle industry is starting to panic because antibiotic overuse has turned “wimpy” diseases like bovine respiratory disease (BRD) into multi-drug resistant infections that can wreak havoc on animal populations.  

The latest news follows a study from earlier this year indicating that, for pigs, growth promotion antibiotics have just about lost their effectiveness. In the past, antibiotics could increase weight gain of young pigs by an average of 16 percent; today antibiotics only speed their growth by 5 percent. And on older pigs, antibiotic impact on growth has become negligible.

In both of these cases, the growing ineffectiveness of antibiotics is attributable in part to their reckless overuse over many decades (including for purposes such as growth promotion that have nothing to do with preserving animal health). While therapeutic treatment of BRD is not in and of itself an improper use of antibiotics, BRD has developed resistance to some antibiotics – including macrolides and tetracyclines – that are widely and improperly used.[1]  Meanwhile, the study on growth promotion implicates increasing levels of antibiotic resistance as one reason behind the diminishing effectiveness of growth promoters.

Antibiotics overuse on factory farms is deeply problematic. The spread of antibiotics resistance is bad for humans, bad for animals and – ironically – increasingly proving to be a problem for the very types of industrial farming facilities that have long been among the biggest contributors to the problem. Now is clearly the time to end factory farm overuse of antibiotics.


             


[1] Macrolide and tetracycline sales data reveals that they are often sold for administration via feed and water, which implies imprecise and potentially reckless (ie nontherapeutic) use.

Photo Credit: USDA


Authors

Gideon Weissman

Former Policy Analyst, Frontier Group