Giving antibiotics to livestock and poultry in their feed is a flawed practice that, by allowing drug-resistant bacteria to develop, may expose humans who consume the animals to health risks.
According to a commentary recently published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, “Mounting evidence suggests the use of antibiotics in food animal production contributes to a considerable fraction of antibiotic-resistant infections in humans.”
So-called free-choice medicated feed — where animals choose how much feed to consume — has become a staple of industrial food animal production. The Food and Drug Administration has approved 685 drugs for medicated animal feed, many of them antibiotics also used to treat infections in humans.
But in their review of studies on medicated feed, researchers from Johns Hopkins University and Animal Welfare Approved, an organization that audits and certifies family farms, said medicated feed “makes delivering a predictable, accurate, and intended dose difficult” because it depends on the animal’s eating habits. Overdosing can poison the animal while insufficient or inconsistent doses can spur the growth of drug-resistant microbes.
“If they don’t get all their food, they don’t get all the medicine, and if they don’t get all the medicine, then the whole bacteria population isn’t wiped out, and that leads to antibiotic resistance,” Dr. David Love, a co-author of the paper, told Food Safety News.
Addressing the same issue, the FDA released draft guidelines last summer that discouraged the use of antibiotics for animal growth purposes. Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., has introduced legislation banning the use of antibiotics for either growth or disease prevention. The research paper urges more regulatory oversight because “no federal requirements currently exist for reporting animal antimicrobial drug use by animal production facility staff or veterinarians.”
Separately, in a draft public health plan to combat drug-resistant pathogens, a federal inter-agency task force warned last week that “extensive use of microbial drugs has resulted in drug resistance that threatens to reverse the medical advances of the last half century.” Unless action is taken, “the world may soon be faced with previously treatable diseases that have again become untreatable.”
The plan’s recommended goals include promoting research and development of alternatives to antibiotics used in animals.
