Antibiotics Still Used Excessively On Farms, Despite Superbug Crisis

[appalachiablue]

- Antibiotics Still Used Excessively On Farms Despite Superbug Crisis - Truthout, Oct. 5, 2018. EXCERPTS:

Antibiotics crucial to human medicine are still being used in “unacceptable” quantities on US livestock farms, despite rules brought in last year intended to curb their use and combat the spread of deadly superbugs.

Tests on thousands of meat samples carried out by the US Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) show that farm animals are still being dosed with powerful antibiotics classified as “critically important” to human health. The widespread use of such drugs on livestock is one of the key drivers of antibiotic resistance, a growing public health crisis.

Regulations were brought in by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in January 2017 which banned the use of antibiotics on livestock without a prescription from a vet and made it illegal to use the drugs solely to make animals fatter, which for years had been a common practice on industrial farms.

However the tests on livestock slaughtered at dozens of US meat packing plants – including some operated by major processors such as Tyson, Cargill and JBS – found “critical” antibiotics still in use in many meat supply chains. There had been no reduction in the number of antibiotics found in samples from the year before the regulations came into effect.

Analysis by the Bureau also shows how a loophole means US farmers can still use many antibiotics targeted by the ban in much the same way today as they could beforehand, including drugs previously used for growth promotion. The findings indicate that more needs to be done to combat antibiotic overuse on farms, according to critics.

Using and overusing antibiotics enables bacteria to develop resistance to them, meaning the drugs will no longer work to treat infections. Antibiotic resistance is one of the gravest public health threats facing the world, estimated to kill 23,000 Americans each year, and 700,000 people around the world. (For comparison, about 40,000 people were killed in car accidents in the U.S. in 2017).

“It is absolutely crucial that these practices end,” said Dr Thomas Van Boeckel, a scientist at Swiss university ETH Zurich who has mapped the use of antibiotics in animals globally. It was “not acceptable” that some company supply chains were found to be using multiple critically important antibiotics, he stressed.

“When meat producers misuse antibiotics important to human medicine, especially those that are considered critically important, resistant bacteria can rapidly multiply, spread off the farm, and potentially infect people with dangerous illness,” said Matt Wellington, antibiotics campaign director of the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG).
“If we lose these life-saving antibiotics, we lose the foundations of our modern medical system.”...

Read More, https://truthout.org/articles/antibiotics-still-used-excessively-on-us-farms-despite-superbug-crisis/



Tests on thousands of meat samples show that farm animals are still being dosed with powerful antibiotics classified as "critically important" to human health.

[procon]

1. Haven't had livestock for years, but all the feed is medicated, the supplements are medicated,

it was inescapable unless you could order a special mix in bulk lots from the feed mill. Many small farm people added more antibiotics to the feed during bad weather, or in the spring when babies were getting born, and the parasites started up again.

[appalachiablue]

2. Awful, but thanks for the info. It's a major global health issue.

[NickB79]

3. Yep, I remember 1-lb bags of tetracycline we'd add to our feed

Ground it ourselves on the farm in 2000 lb batches, using corn, oats, alfalfa, soy, a few 50 lb bags of supplements, and a bag of antibiotics. Didn't matter if the animals were sick or not.