Antibiotics on the Farm
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/09/opinion/09TUE2.html

January 9, 2001
One of the most striking patterns in modern American agriculture is
the increasing use of antibiotics as a regular supplement in the
feed and water consumed by cows, pigs and especially poultry. Most
of these drugs are administered in small doses to farm animals not
to cure sickness but to promote more growth on less feed and to
prevent the infections that come with crowding in feedlots and
confinement systems. The practice began in the late 1940's and
early 1950's and has accelerated rapidly. Nobody knows precisely
what volume of antibiotics is used today. But new estimates
released by a public interest group this week suggest that the
amount of antibiotics used nontherapeutically in American livestock
has grown to 24.6 million pounds per year, a number that may be as
much as 50 percent higher than it was in 1985.

These figures appear in a new report on agricultural antibiotics
by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit organization
based in Cambridge, Mass. The numbers are alarming for two reasons.
First, 24.6 million pounds far exceeds previous estimates. Second,
it was a very hard number to arrive at because the data for
antibiotic production and use   in humans or animals   are, as the
report states, "shockingly incomplete." A trade group for the
makers of veterinary medicines has estimated, for example, that far
more antibiotics are used in treating human illness than are
administered to animals. But the new estimates find just the
opposite   that for nontherapeutic purposes, cows, pigs and poultry
receive over all more than eight times the amount of antibiotics
humans receive in the treatment of actual illness.

The public has a vital interest in this issue because the number
of microbes that are resistant to antibiotic treatments is
increasing, and much of the problem stems from the overuse of
antibiotics, which kill off susceptible microbes but leave the
resistant ones to proliferate. Giving large numbers of animals
small doses of antibiotics creates perfect conditions for the
development of resistant strains of microbes, including salmonella
and campylobacter, that cause disease in humans. There is already
widespread concern in the medical community about the prescription
of unnecessary antibiotics for human use, but that problem is
exacerbated by the indiscriminate use of antibiotics in
agriculture. Moreover, the practice of giving animals antibiotics
is largely unnecessary, as farmers in Sweden, where giving
important human antibiotics to farm animals is illegal, have
proved.

The public also has an interest in the quality of information
concerning antibiotic usage. It is difficult to craft meaningful
policy without accurate numbers. As this report convincingly
argues, "even the most basic information on antimicrobial usage is
not available"   not from government sources and not from industry.
Indeed, government health officials have complained about the lack
of reliable data on antibiotic use.

The way to ensure that antibiotics retain their efficacy against
disease is to know exactly how and in what quantities they are
being administered and to eliminate unnecessary usage. The Food and
Drug Administration will be exploring the use of antibiotics in
animals at a meeting later this month. It will need to analyze the
warring estimates and find a way to end the statistical
uncertainties. But there seems little doubt that antibiotic use
will need to be cut back sharply before it produces even more
microbes that are resistant to modern medicines.

The New York Times on the Web