The overuse of antibiotics has become an established part of raising food animals.  When you overcrowd, overstimulate, and overfeed any of the Earth’s creatures, you are likely to need a miracle cure for the resulting problems.  Hence, we have overuse of our miracle cures – antibiotics – which are most often meant to kick-start a large weight gain early on or to mend an infection gained from some other stress.  This overuse has contributed to the development of strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, thus reducing the effectiveness of antibiotics against diseases in humans and animals.

How did this happen?  Antibiotics save lives don’t they?  Using antibiotics on animals began with good intentions.  When an animal became sick, the veterinarian prescribed antibiotics, just as for humans.  However, antibiotics seemed to help in other ways, helping the animals grow much more quickly, handling the potential instead of the presence of disease.  They became the panacea for growers.  In the past 15 years, use of antimicrobials for nontherapeutic (non-disease) purposes seems to have risen by about 50 percent.  How much is the actual total? Industry and advocates differ.  The Union of Concerned Scientists reports, “Our estimates of 24.6 million pounds in animal agriculture and 3 million pounds in human medicine suggests that 8 times more antimicrobials are used for nontherapeutic purposes in the three major livestock sectors than in human medicine.”

Again, why do we care?  Because those antibiotics are the animal versions of the same ones we use.  The problem is that these bacteria are building resistance, just as bugs build resistance to pesticides.  Hence, the antibiotics aren’t working as well on us.  Cipro, for instance, is the very drug reported as the antidote being administered during the anthrax scares in the fall of 2001; Cipro is in a class of antibiotics called fluoroquinolones. From a press release by the group Environmental Defense: “Physicians have used fluoroquinolones as an essential treatment for foodborne disease (particularly on campylobacter bacteria) since 1986.  Very little resistance occurred until its use in poultry began in 1995.  By 1998, the Centers for Disease Control found that over 13 percent of foodborne campylobacter was resistant to fluoroquinolones.  [In 2000,] resistance rose to nearly 18 percent.”  Click here to read more studies on antimicrobial resistance.