Antibiotics in our Meat

Perhaps more dangerous than we thought...

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A series of food shortage riots and protests in the early twentieth century led American farmers, especially livestock and meat producers, to seek ways to bolster their production output that would match exponentially rising demand.  After food crises during WW I, farmers employed various natural growth enhancers including cod liver oil and fish meal which provided animal protein in livestock feed to lead to heavier animals at butchering maturity.  These were expensive and had to be imported.  Once World War II erupted, these imported ingredients became unavailable so the federal government pushed for further research into growth enhancers for meat production.  Plant-based protein still proved to be insufficient in boosting animal growth.  Serendipitously, the addition of vitamin B 12 from residues of antibiotic production into animal feed led to animals growing 50% faster than the control group.  However, the researchers at the Lederle laboratories soon realized that it wasn’t the B 12 so much as the trace amounts of the antibiotic Aureomycin still present in the refuse that was enhancing the growth so much.  Some possible explanations have since surfaced, including that the drug kills intestinal flora allowing the animal to absorb all of its feed’s nutrients for itself.[1]  The post-war boom of the 1950’s once again led to high unprecedented demand for meat.  This decade saw the introduction of antibiotics as a crucial part of the nation’s agricultural system and worked it did.  So well, in fact, that farmers and scientists began claiming it as the ultimate solution to food production and that we could kiss protein shortages goodbye.  Soon after though, Japanese and American researchers began linking increased sub-therapeutic, growth-inducing antibiotic use to resistant bacteria so dangerous that it could lead us back to an era where antibiotics were non-existent for medicine.[2]

            In 2011 the United States devoted 80% of all its antibiotics (by weight) to livestock production.[3]  17 million tonnes of antibiotics are used in sub-therapeutic doses strictly to speed up and enhance animal growth for the meat industry.  Eventually, the antibiotics lead to resistant microbes in the meat and also in humans after consumption of the meat.  This poses serious public health risks, not just because of resistant bacteria but also the un- or under-researched side effects the accumulation of these drugs in humans can cause.  The European Union and Canada have since banned the use of antibiotics for non-medical uses, and even the World Health Organization has warned that farmers should drastically reduce their use to protect public health.  It is still completely legal in America to do so and is the industry standard for meat production.  Meat producers argue that the cheap, plentiful meat that antibiotics make possible outweigh the risks and that those risks are not studied enough to warrant banning its use.  Many studies have revealed that bacteria like salmonella are prevalent in roughly 20% of ground beef and that 84% of that salmonella was drug-resistant.  This poses very immediate risks to consumers.  America needs to decide whether to err on the side of caution or profit. 

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[1] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/meat/safe/overview.html

[2] http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2013/09/03/riots-rage-and-resistance-a-brief-history-of-how-antibiotics-arrived-on-the-farm/

[3] http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2011/07/what-usda-doesnt-want-you-know-about-antibiotics-and-factory-farms