In Episode 220 of Mother Earth News and Friends, learn about how antibiotic usage plays a role in raising animals – and how antibiotics resistance can pose a challenge for animal and human health. In this episode, Steven Roach of Food Animal Concerns Trust (FACT) answers some of the big questions when it comes to antibiotics use in livestock, including the risks of antibiotics overuse, antibiotics stewardship for people and animals, and how to choose producers that practice safe antibiotics use.
Scroll down for our episode transcript, and scroll to the bottom for our show-note resources!
Responsible Antibiotics Use in Animals Trancript
Kenny Coogan: [00:00:00] FACT states that superbugs created through the overuse of antibiotics affects humans, even humans who don’t consume meat. So can you talk a little bit about that?
Steve Roach: There’s multiple pathways. The meat is the easiest way to get antibiotic resistant bacteria to people cause a lot of people do eat meat. If you’re eating at a restaurant, if that restaurant didn’t care for, they can cross contaminate, you know, vegetables and things like that. You can do that same thing in your kitchen.
Jessica Anderson: Welcome to the Mother Earth News and Friends podcast. At Mother Earth News for 50 years and counting, we’ve been dedicated to conserving the planet’s natural resources while helping you conserve your financial resources. In this podcast, we host conversations with experts in the fields of sustainability, homesteading, natural health, and more to share all about how you can live well wherever you are in a way that [00:01:00] values both people and our Mother Earth.
[00:01:04] Introducing Steve Roach
Kenny Coogan: Good day, everyone, and we appreciate you for joining us on another exciting Mother Earth News and Friends podcast. I am Kenny Coogan, and joining me today is Steve Roach, the Safe and Healthy Food Program Director at FACT, which stands for Food Animal Concerns Trust.
Today, we are going to discuss how antibiotic misuse in animals contributes to antibiotic misuse in humans and how we can be responsible caretakers and antibiotic users for both people and livestock.
Steve Roach’s work at Food Animal Concerns Trust, or FACT, focuses on reducing the animal health risks that results from the production of food animals, including risks from foodborne illnesses, dangerous drug residues, and antibiotic resistance. Steve is also a senior analysis for Keep Antibiotics Working, a [00:02:00] coalition for advocacy organizers that have joined forces to combat the inappropriate use of antibiotics in food animals. Steve has worked on policy related to antibiotics use in agriculture for over 20 years.
Welcome to the podcast, Steve.
Steve Roach: Good morning, and I appreciate being invited on here. I’m the Safe and Healthy Food Program Director at Food Animal Concerns Trust, and we’re a not for profit that’s based in Chicago that looks on issues around animal agriculture.
We have two main programs, our Humane Farming Program, and then the program that I lead, the Safe and Healthy Food Program, kind of looks at the negative impacts of animal agriculture.
Kenny Coogan: So you joined FACT in 1998. Why did you want to be part of that organization? And specifically, why then?
Steve Roach: I had done a master’s degree in anthropology looking at agricultural systems after having been a Peace Corps volunteer in, in uh, Eswatini in southern Africa. And there, I was really interested in [00:03:00] agricultural systems. So I came back to the U. S. and I worked on farms. I worked on a dairy for a while. I spent a lot of time picking vegetables. And then I, I wanted to go back to Africa, and I got a master’s degree in anthropology, looking at sustainable development. And then I went to Peace Corps for a little bit, and I did actually end up staying in, in Guatemala, but I didn’t stay the whole term. There was some violence at my work site that kind of made me want to leave early. And that I developed a relationship with my wife to be. And so then I was looking for a job in the U. S. and this opportunity at FACT opened up. And so then I took it and it seems like it must have stuck because I’ve been there since then.
Kenny Coogan: And what are some of FACT’s biggest goals?
Steve Roach: We have the two programs. And I’ll talk about the Humane Farming Program because it’s a really neat program. And actually, when I started at FACT, I was in charge of that program. And at that time, I was working on managing egg laying business because [00:04:00] we actually, our profit, not for profit, had a for profit subsidiary, kind of trying to introduce into the American market, cage free eggs.
So I was actually working with grocery stores in the Northeast and in Chicago, trying to get selling eggs. So it was kind of interesting. We worked with a bunch of Amish farmers out in Pennsylvania. We had a farm in Illinois that we worked with. But then when the job opened up for the food safety program, I took that and that’s what I, I’ve been working on now.
But going back to the humane farming program, there, we provide services to farmers who want to raise animals in a more humane way. And so we have grant program. We have webinars. We have a mentorship program. And we have a scholarships to conferences. So that’s the humane farming program.
And then my program, the safe and healthy food program, we basically look at trying to address the negative impacts of animal agriculture, such things as food safety challenges, Salmonella [00:05:00] and Campylobacter, and then antibiotic resistance. And at, you know, at one point we were working a lot on mad cow disease as well. But a big part of our focus right now is on antibiotic resistance.
[00:05:12] What is Antibiotic Overuse?
Kenny Coogan: And can you define what “antibiotic overuse” is?
Steve Roach: It’s basically when you’re using an antibiotic when you don’t need to is how I would say it. But what creates the need is a big question.
So you know, the easiest one I say that where I would describe as an antibiotic overuse is in feedlot cattle, where we’re giving them a diet, we’re giving them a high high grain diet, high energy diet, which causes, you know, problems with their digestive system, which then leads to liver abscesses. And then to manage that and control it, not to eliminate it, but to keep it at a lower level, they give antibiotics for the whole, generally most of the feedlots, the large feedlots in the U. S., give antibiotics for the whole feeding period. And it’s Tylosin is the one that’s used, and that’s a [00:06:00] drug that’s considered critically important by the Food and Drug Administration and also by the World Health Organization. So what we’re doing is, we’re creating a system, kind of feeding the cattle an inappropriate diet that leads to them this problem that you then manage with antibiotics.
And that’s what I would say is the main cause of antibiotic overuse in food animals.
Kenny Coogan: And if we’re providing farm animals, or humans, appropriate diets and environments, do you believe there is a need for antibiotics? Are they necessary at some point? Or some circumstances?
Steve Roach: Yeah, definitely. I mean, so we, you know, in our humane farming program, we work with lots of small diversified farmers that are providing you know, pretty healthy conditions for the animals.
But at times, they’re going to need antibiotics, just like you and me need antibiotics. But we also have, both in humans and animals, a lot of overuse. And I can, I kind of can give a easy, another example of [00:07:00] overuse. It’s not in the food animal range, but I took one of my dogs has vestibular disease or developed it last week where they get dizzy, and it’s just something that happens to older dogs, and it can be caused by inner ear infection.
So we took, you know, we were terrified because we thought the dog had a stroke because it’s like wobbling, throwing up, you know, it’s just terrible. And we took it to the vet and they said, no, this is obviously vestibular disease, which could be caused by an ear infection. So because of that, they gave us antibiotics to give to the dog, without any signs of an infection and knowing that very often it just happens. It’s not caused by anything. They also gave us really strong steroids in case it was a brain tumor. We didn’t take the steroids or the antibiotics because it, there wasn’t any evidence that we needed it.
So that happens in humans as well, because I remember when I took my kids to the pediatrician, too many times, they would give you amoxicillin. And so it’s not only an animal thing, except, you know, we need to keep in mind that we’re using about twice as many [00:08:00] antibiotics in food animal production as in treating sick people. And, you know, we have a lot more animals, but we also care a lot more about people. And we keep very old, very sick people. Try to keep them alive. And I think that’s appropriate.
[00:08:14] Risks of Antibiotics Overuse
Kenny Coogan: So what risks does antibiotic overuse pose to animals?
Steve Roach: It’s the same ones we have in, in humans. So, you know, animals and people are kind of the same thing. I mean, the biggest thing with animals is we control so much about what they can do, and we can’t control people that way, which is good.
So, the biggest thing we’re worried about is resistant superbugs. So that’s infections that can’t be treated with the antibiotics. So if you’re constantly giving the animals antibiotics, then eventually those ones won’t work. And then they’ll get sick where you need to use it. And you won’t be able to use it.
That’s probably the main one. There are some other things that happen. You know, when you give antibiotics, it can mess up the gut bacteria, and that can screw with your [00:09:00] immune system. So there’s probably some evidence of problems like that. In humans, we also have clostridial infections, where if you give an antibiotic, it causes the bacteria in your gut to overgrow. And then people can get, we have clostridial disease in, in swine as well. But the big one we’re concerned about is the superbugs, which are bacteria that we used to be able to treat and can no longer treat. And so then we have to find a newer antibiotic, which kind of ramps up the problem of antibiotic resistance.
Kenny Coogan: Steve, I don’t know if you saw this, but there’s a 2016 video from the Harvard Medical School. It’s only two minutes long, and it’s called “The Evolution of Bacteria on a Mega Plate Petri Dish,” and it’s so amazing. It’s like a 3 foot petri dish, and they put a little bacteria on the edge, and then they do these like kind of columns where it’s like one times the antibiotic, 10 times, 100 times, 1,000 times. And within like 10 days, the bacteria just spreads, and it can [00:10:00] live in a environment that’s 1, 000 times, stronger than it used to.
Steve Roach: Yeah. Yeah. I’ve seen that. And we think that’s a, it really illustrates how bacteria can evolve because, you know, the, the bacteria have a new generation really quickly.
And the other thing that bacteria are really good at doing is sharing a gene. So we talk about bacterial sex, whatever that means, but they’re definitely able to to share resistance genes from each other. And one of the challenges we have is when they’re sharing these resistance genes, very often, they’re in these packages where you’ll have resistance to multiple antibiotics at one time. So it’s, it’s a really kind of complex and challenging problem.
On some level, the solution is very, very easy to address. It’s just don’t overuse the antibiotics. I mean, I think that’s an oversimplification, but that’s kind of, it needs to be your, your first step. And then we can think about, okay, what are the other things that we need to do to manage this [00:11:00] problem?
Kenny Coogan: I was teaching middle school agriculture for many years, and we would show them that Petri dish video from the Harvard Medical School. Because at the very end, they circle the points where the bacteria evolved. So you have like this beautiful cladogram, you basically have a family tree, and you can trace their ancestors of when they got this random mutation that allowed them to live in what we would consider a harsh environment.
And that’s why when you do take antibiotics, you should finish the dose, even if you feel better.
[00:11:33] How to Correctly Take Antibiotics
Steve Roach: That’s right. And are making sure you you’re using them correctly. One of the challenges also we have in in food systems it’s very often, food animals are getting multiple antibiotics at once. There’s very often there’s combination feed additives. So you’re mixing multiple antibiotics and that’s like a harsher environment, but that means you have super superbugs. So, you know, it’s a, there’s a lot of things that we do is wrong.
I think one of the, another thing [00:12:00] that’s pretty common is you’ll give an injection at one point in the animal’s life, and then after that, to control the disease to keep it from coming back, they’ll keep giving low doses of antibiotics for a long time. And again, that’s sort of a good recipe for creating resistant bacteria.
And the other part of creating resistant bacteria is if you have ever been on a feed lot, the big feed lots, they’re not standing in grass. They’re standing basically on manure. And then, you know, you scrape the manure in a big pile, but that whole area is essentially manure dust everywhere going back and forth. So, it’s that helps to spread resistance as well.
Kenny Coogan: You just said sometimes people give their animals like low amounts of antibiotics. Do you think that’s the farmer, or is that a veterinarian prescribing that? Because it doesn’t seem like a vet would.
Steve Roach: At this point, it’s a vet, because from 2017, the feed in the water ones, FDA convinced the industry to [00:13:00] the, actually the drug makers, to change the labels, so that you can only use feed and water medically important antibiotics with a veterinary order. And so a vet has to be involved, but they’re so used to doing this, you know, that it’s been done for a long time. And as I said, with the example of the liver abscesses in the, in the feedlot cattle, that is a months long, and it’s, it is a fairly low dose. It’s not a treatment dose it would use.
I think in the past we kind of emphasize the low doses, and I think that’s not so important as the dose as how long you give it and how many animals. And what we are, a challenge is kind of routine preventive use. And when you’re talking about preventive use, it’s when you’re giving antibiotics to animals that don’t have any signs of illness. Because you don’t have signs, you can’t choose specific animals. You have to give it to the whole group. And then also because you don’t really know when the problem is going to happen, you give tend to give it for longer periods of time.
[00:13:59] Antibiotics in Animals Harmful to Humans?
Kenny Coogan: Earlier you’re [00:14:00] mentioning about superbugs. And FACT states that superbugs created through the overuse of antibiotics affects humans, even humans who don’t consume meat. So can you talk a little bit about that?
Steve Roach: There’s multiple pathways. The meat is the easiest way to get antibiotic resistant bacteria to people cause a lot of people do eat meat. If you’re eating at a restaurant, if that restaurant didn’t care for, they can cross contaminate, you know, vegetables and things like that. You can do that same thing in your kitchen.
But the other pathway that’s fairly important is, most of the waste from the animals and manure is spread on fields, and then it can get washed into water, and then that can contaminate. If that water is used to irrigate crops, it can you know, spread antibiotic resistant bacteria that way. And then so somebody eating produce could get a resistant infection that way.
And another pathway would be farm workers basically picking up a bug at work and then [00:15:00] carrying it to the community. They might not get sick, but a family member could, or, you know, they could just pass it on. Once somebody else has gotten resistant infection, then they might go to the hospital and they might spread it around in a hospital to another one. So we just don’t, the bacteria don’t stay. They tend to spread out.
Kenny Coogan: Earlier you were mentioning that antibiotic overuse is one of the many things that we do wrong. And you were talking about humane farming. So do you consider antibiotic overuse to be a kind of inhumane farming method?
Steve Roach: I would say it’s a response to inhumane farming methods. There was at least one study showing, and I think this is pretty consistently found, if you increase weaning, this is in a CAFO, those big confinement facilities, from 21 days to 28 days, you reduce the need for treatment antibiotics by half. So what it’s saying is a choice to wean when the [00:16:00] baby pig’s stomach digestive system is not developed enough to switch over to solid food causes a health problem that then you manage with antibiotics.
But it’s also a humane problem, right? Taking the baby pigs from the mama before they’re ready to eat solid food, it’s a humane problem. And I you know, we also you see the same thing in dairy cattle too, taking a calf from its mother where it’s just been weaned, putting it on a truck, taking it to a sale barn. That’s a human health problem because that’s a really good way to get respiratory disease. But it’s also not very nice to that calf.
Kenny Coogan: Why are people weaning the piglets seven days early? To make more money?
Steve Roach: Yeah, yeah, it’s a little bit cheaper, so you don’t have to have as, you know, you can breed back the, the sow more quickly. You get a, you know, basically have a week earlier of breeding back the sow, so she’s gonna have babies a week earlier. And the spacing, so you don’t have to use that space, you can use your space more. You know, this isn’t a lot of money, but you [00:17:00] know, if you’re a big CAFO farmer, the margins also aren’t great. So I think there’s pressure.
I, I, you know, I don’t want to say you know, there’s multiple responsibilities and people make choices. And, and, and that’s, that’s how it is. But that is a money, it’s a money decision. And the people that aren’t doing that are, can do it because they get a premium for, you know, using other systems, raising humanely raised animals or, you know, marketing them as raised without antibiotics.
Kenny Coogan: All right now, you did mention CAFO a few times, so we just want to make sure everybody knows that that stands for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation, where you have lots of animals in small quarters.
Steve Roach: Exactly. Most of the food animals in the U. S. are raised on CAFOs. Though, interesting, most of the farms where animals are raised are not CAFOs. It’s just we have a lot of very tiny farms that don’t produce a whole lot, a whole large percentage of the meat. And then most of the meat’s on these [00:18:00] really giant farms. And that’s kind of this, I would say, you know, bifurcated system that we have for raising animals. And FACT’s really trying to make that, those small producers a bigger portion of it. And there’s lots of challenges for them, like access to processors. Because if you, if you can’t have access to processing, you can’t raise animals in this way. And then, so you end up raising them in the way that tends to be high on antibiotics.
[00:18:24] Antibiotic Stewardship for People and Animals
Kenny Coogan: Can you give some examples of what responsible antibiotic stewardship would look like for humans and for animals?
Steve Roach: Give the animals what they need to lead healthy lives. And that’s kind of what, really, what you want to do with humans. So that they don’t need antibiotics routinely. If what you’re doing requires routine antibiotics, you’re doing something wrong.
And that’s how, how we see it. So that means don’t give cattle high energy diets. Don’t wean pigs too early. Give animals enough space to [00:19:00] move around and kind of live healthy lives. Then when you have that system, then use antibiotics when the animals get sick, don’t use them to prevent disease.
And I would say in humans, responsible antibiotic use is more focused on making sure you have a bacterial infection, not a viral infection, before you give it. So it’s, it’s more like at the treatment level, but, but really it works the same. I mean, if, if we’re not providing humans healthy environments, you know, not having air pollution that causes respiratory disease in humans, then it’s kind of the same thing. But generally in stewardship and humans almost is making sure you’re using the antibiotics at the right time in the right antibiotic. And I would say in, you know, in places where sanitation isn’t great, you have high levels of antibiotic resistance because, you know, people are spreading bacteria around, kind of like we do on farms in, in cases where you don’t have good water quality and good sanitation. [00:20:00] Then resistance is, is mainly driven by that lack of hygiene, it can be a problem.
[00:20:05] Food Animal Concerns Trust Grants
Kenny Coogan: The Food Animal Concerns Trust has awarded over 600 grants to farmers, totaling over $1 million since 2012, and I think this is on the other half of the organization, but can you talk about what those grants are for, or who they’re for and what they do?
Steve Roach: I think the 2 main areas that we have the grant program. One, one is just for taking steps to improve the, the welfare of the animals on the farm. So we spend time, we spend a lot of grants on fencing so people can do multi paddock grazing and have better, better pastures. Because one of the big things we want to promote is outdoor access and pasture raised based systems.
But we also do provide funding for people to help get certifications for some of the welfare standards that we like. We like that Animal Welfare Approved Humane [00:21:00] Certified G.A.P., 4 and higher, and then American Grassfed certified.
So there’s kind of those, it’s sort of almost like, okay, give people resources so that they can do things better on the farm. But also give them resources so they can actually market to get, you know, get that economic boost from doing things the right way.
[00:21:22] Healthy Foods with Healthy Antibiotics Usage
Kenny Coogan: FACT states that farmers are successfully producing healthy food without the misuse of antibiotics and cancer causing drugs in raising of livestock. So, how are they accomplishing this?
Steve Roach: One of the ways we could probably reduce a lot of the antibiotic overuse is figuring a way to make it profitable for those guys to keep those calves on that farm where they’re out on the pasture eating grass for longer. And that’s one of the things that we’re interested in looking at is how can regenerative grazing, which is where you do a lot more intensive managing of your pastures, so you can actually keep the [00:22:00] cattle on it longer and the pastures are healthier and they’re healthier for the animals.
You also mentioned the carcinogenic drug. And that’s something we’re working on as well. It’s a little bit different. There’s an antibiotic that’s not used in humans, so it’s not considered medically important, called Carbadox, but everyone knows it’s a carcinogen. FDA has always known it’s a carcinogen. And in 2016, FDA said, hey, let’s not use this. We’d like to withdraw the approval of it. But then the drug maker has been fighting them since then, and so it’s still on the market. So over half the pigs in the U. S. are getting a carcinogen that can lead to drug residues in food.
And we’re, what we’re trying to do on that is trying to get the FDA to go through with the withdrawal of it, but also talking to a lot of food companies and say, hey, do you really want to be poisoning your customers and giving them an increased risk of cancer? So this one’s a residue issue.
Most of the time with antibiotics, we’re not concerned about residues. We’re more concerned about the [00:23:00] superbugs, antibiotic resistant bacteria. But in this one, it’s, there is really this one really nasty drug that’s given to pigs.
But the thing about this one cancer causing drug, there’s alternatives. So, if your pigs are sick, you know, there are other antibiotics that don’t have this, don’t cause cancer that you can use. And to prevent the disease, you know, this one’s is for gastrointestinal disease. Again, don’t wean your baby pigs too early. I mean, and then you, you won’t need to use this cancer causing drug and mean that people eat, eat pork are, you know, being exposed to carcinogenic residues.
Kenny Coogan: Okay. So that’s pretty scary, that the drug manufacturer has a foothold on the FDA, because I would imagine the FDA did its research and studies and they said, Oh, we found that this drug gives cancer or carcinogens to the pigs.
Steve Roach: It’s more, you know, the pigs are only alive for half a year, so they don’t really live [00:24:00] long enough to get cancer. So it’s more the concern about the residues and people.
You know, some of the other countries have also withdrawn it because of concerns about the farm workers that are handling a carcinogen in the feed. So you’re going to get, you know, if you’re working on a pig farm and you’re feeding, you know, dry pig feed, you’re going to get dust from that feed. And so there’s concerns about that.
So, yeah, FDA, once it’s approved a drug, and this, it approved this one, you know, decades ago, it really struggles to withdraw approvals after they’re already out there. And it, I mean, we’ve, we’ve seen this before. Arsenicals, you know, they used to feed, basically arsenic compounds, again, you know, a very toxic chemical that they thought was safe in the form it was. And then they did studies. “Oh, we screwed up. It wasn’t safe.” But that one, the company voluntarily withdrew. In this one, the, the drug company’s fighting, and so it’s taking years.
The early, [00:25:00] you know, one of them was DES, which was a drug that caused birth defects. I think it took FDA 10 years to get all the approvals of that one withdrawn. It’s just, we’ve created a system that makes it very hard for the agency to, to make changes.
Kenny Coogan: Another reason why a lot of listeners of Mother Earth News and Friends podcasts probably want to be raising their own animals. We don’t want to be using or feeding carcinogens to animals, but I imagine people, or at least the companies, on the other side of this will say there’s a risk of not producing enough food if we’re not going to use the same level of antibiotics we currently are. So, Steve, what is your argument for that?
Steve Roach: In the U.S., particularly, again, we can switch, look at us in versus global, but in the U.S., you know, we’re overproducing pigs. We’re exporting 20% of our pigs, actually, I think it’s pushing up to 30%. So we’re [00:26:00] making more pigs in the U. S., you know, raising more pigs in the U. S., than we can eat. So that’s that’s one side of it.
In terms of the amount of land we have, like, half of the corn acres in Iowa, and corn’s like our big crop, are just going into ethanol, so we’re not even using that land to raise food for people to eat. It’s actually just going to burn in our cars in a, in supposedly to address climate change. But, you know, most of the studies that come out in the last 10 years have shown that that whole system isn’t good for climate change either. Because we’re always struggling, what do we do with all the corn and soybeans that we produce?
We have plenty of land, we’re overproducing pigs for our own consumption, and some other meat products as well. So, I think we could have a system that addressed some other issues, like antibiotic overuse. I think we should do a better job of addressing pollution from big farms as well. But we have enough land and we have enough resources [00:27:00] to do that and have a much healthier food system.
[00:27:02] How to Reduce Antibiotic Overuse
Kenny Coogan: Now money talks and people say to vote with your wallet. So in addition to raising your own livestock in a humane way, what are some ways people can reduce the occurrence of antibiotic overuse, or how would they even know?, I’m imagining going to like a big grocery store and it’s hard to know if those animals were fed an appropriate amount of antibiotics or none at all.
Steve Roach: Our first response is to ask people to go out and kind of buy from a local farmer . You can go to the farmers market. Often there’s meat CSAs, and then you can ask them how they raise the animal.
On our website, the FACT website, we actually have a little guide to what you could, what type of questions you can ask.
But then if you go to the grocery store, we, we do, we have a certain number of those labels that we ask people to look for. So the Animal Welfare Approved Humane certified G.A.P, and then [00:28:00] the American Grassfed certified. So, those are, those are good. Those address humane treatment of the animals and they also address the antibiotic use because they, they tend to go hand in hand.
But if you can’t find those, you’re, I, I believe you’re better off then going for a “raised without antibiotics” label. You know, again, they’re not perfect and they don’t guarantee that you have the humane treatment if they don’t have that other certification on it, but they do tend to address the problem of antibiotic resistance.
And then there’s another label that we wish would be taken up more and it’s called Certified Responsible Antibiotic Use. And it’s been developed by the folks over at the Antibiotic Resistant Action Center at George Washington University, and I think the, the folks at Natural Resources Defense Council also put a good bit of effort in that.
And that one allows producers to treat their animals when they’re sick. But also to but then it doesn’t allow this overuse. So I think [00:29:00] that’s a good label. But it’s so far, it’s been primarily on use on chickens and turkeys going into like school food programs, not for individuals. But we, we do hear they’re likely to get a, a cattle producer certified under it, which will be direct marketing.
So there are options. It’s just whether you can find them locally. For myself, personally, we buy a pig from a farm in Nettle Valley Farm in Spring Grove, Minnesota. You know, we, we know which farm we get the milk that we eat it’s from Radiance Farm here in Fairfield, Iowa. And so we buy half a pig and we eat that for the year. But where we really struggle is if you go out to eat, you just, it’s very hard to find stuff that’s raised humanely or with, without excessive antibiotics, unless you go to high end restaurants, but you know, you can’t do that too often or you’ll go broke.
Kenny Coogan: So you just mentioned turkeys and chickens, and we’ve been talking about the antibiotic [00:30:00] resistance in meat or, you know, livestock a lot. Are we concerned about residue in chicken eggs?
Steve Roach: We don’t focus very much on residues in chicken eggs. We, we hope that with, with the chickens, because they’re, it’s like dairy, they’re harvesting continuously, so they shouldn’t be using routine antibiotics in those. So in chickens, they will use antibiotics. Takes 20 weeks before a chicken starts laying an egg, a commercial chicken, so they may use antibiotics there. I think more they use chemicals to keep this parasite that’s in the, in the manure, you know, in the litter, from them, and those aren’t generally antibiotics. So they do that. For dairy and eggs, because of continuous harvest, I think that antibiotic use isn’t as high as in the meat chickens. The industry has done a lot better job of reducing it than the other sectors.
Kenny Coogan: So FACT stands for Food Animal Concerns Trust. Where can listeners [00:31:00] go to learn more about FACT and what you’re doing?
Steve Roach: Our website is FoodAnimalConcernsTrust.org. It’s all one word run together. You know, and then we are on Twitter @TalkWithFACT, and then on Facebook.
Kenny Coogan: Thank you so much, Steve, for speaking with us. Our conversation on antibiotic misuse has been very educational. And we hope listeners take action.
Steve Roach: Thank you, Kenny, and I appreciate being here.
[00:31:27] Podcast Credits
Jessica Anderson: Thanks for joining us for this episode of Mother Earth News and Friends. To listen to more podcasts and get connected on our social media, visit www.MotherEarthNews.com/Podcast. You can also email us at Podcast@OgdenPubs.Com with any questions or suggestions.
Our podcast production team includes Jessica Anderson, Kenny Coogan, and Alyssa Warner.
Music for this episode is “Hustle” by Kevin MacLeod.
The Mother Earth News and Friends podcast is a production of [00:32:00] Ogden Publications.
Until next time, don’t forget to love your Mother.
About Steven Roach
Steve Roach’s work at Food Animal Concerns Trust (FACT) focuses on reducing the animal health risks that results from the production of food animals, including risks from foodborne illnesses, dangerous drug residues, and antibiotic resistance. Steve is also a senior analysis for Keep Antibiotics Working, a coalition for advocacy organizers that have joined forces to combat the inappropriate use of antibiotics in food animals. Steve has worked on policy related to antibiotics use in agriculture for over 20 years.
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