Breeding an Epidemic Antibiotics and Meat

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

ANTIBIOTICS AND LIVESTOCK

Unfortunately, even if all physicians exercised thorough restraint in the use of antibiotics, there would still be a tremendous influx of these substances into the environment. Nearly half the volume of antibiotics produced in the U. S. each year—about 15,000,000 pounds, worth almost $250,000,000—is fed to animals. Penicillin, tetracycline, and other such medications are routinely mixed into the feed of the majority of livestock in this country . . . not mainly to stave off disease but, instead, in efforts to increase growth rates.

In 1949, Dr. Thomas Jukes—who then worked for Lederle Laboratories, the company that discovered chlortetracycline (Aureomycin)found that feeding the wastes from the production of chlortetracycline to baby chickens increased their growth rate by 10 to 20%. Continued research showed that the effect was at least as pronounced on piglets and calves. Companies such as American Cyanamid (the parent of Lederle and the largest producer of veterinary tetracycline) claim that giving doses of antibiotics well below those that would be used to treat disease (a procedure called subtherapeutic administration) can return $3.00 in improved feed-conversion efficiency for every dollar invested.

Dr. Jukes' discovery did much to make a whole new sort of farming possible. Antibiotics have made it more practical to confine animals where they can be fed controlled doses of commercial feeds, rather than allowing them to range. And, because of the medicinal properties of the antibiotics, animals can be kept in such crowded conditions without serious outbreaks of disease. Antibiotic-supplemented rations have made possible the modern-day feedlot . . . an efficient method of raising fowl, pigs, or cattle that has done much to make the small, low-intensity family farm uneconomic.

At the same time, the volume of antibiotics and their by-product, resistant bacteria, has burgeoned. According to an Office of Technology Assessment report in 1979, 99% of all poultry, 70% of beef cattle and veal, and 90% of swine receive routine subtherapeutic doses of antibiotics. It's now nearly impossible to find livestock that don't have significant populations of resistant bacteria, whether or not they've actually been fed antibiotics. The resistant strains quickly pass from one animal to another in confinement and have even been reported to mysteriously travel several hundred yards between pens.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print