Search results: antibiotics

By this time everybody knows—or ought to—that the non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in farm animals is a threat to human health. 

Using antibiotics to promote animal growth or reduce feed requirements is a bad idea.  Widespread use of these drugs induces microbial resistance, making the antibiotics ineffective against human disease.

So you would think that public health agencies would be falling all over themselves trying to reduce antibiotic use in farm animals.  No such luck.  Proposals to restrict use of antibiotics for therapeutic purposes runs up against the interests of meat and poultry industries. 

The best the FDA can do falls far short of what is needed.  Witness its pussy footing on cephalosporin drugs.

On January 4, the FDA proposed a final rule on use of cephalosporin drugs in animal agriculture.

The rule bans some “extralabel” (i.e., unapproved) uses of cephalosporin antimicrobial drugs in some food animals—cattle, swine, chickens, and turkeys. 

As the FDA’s press release explains, it is banning use of cephalosporins:

• At unapproved dose levels, frequencies, durations, or routes of administration
• In forms that are not approved for use in cattle, swine, chickens, and turkeys because they are intended for humans or companion animals
• For disease prevention

These are all good things but should do much more. 

Cephalosporins are used in humans to treat pneumonia, skin and soft tissue infections, pelvic inflammatory disease, diabetic foot infections, and urinary tract infections.

If bacteria are resistant to cephalosporins, doctors have fewer options for treatment and these are less effective or more harmful.

 What is troubling is that the FDA proposed a more restrictive ban in 2008 but reversed the decision under pressure from industry veterinarians.

As Food Safety News reports, the new order, which is scheduled to go into effect in April, follows a couple of previous notices published last year. 

In November, the FDA turned down consumer petitions calling for a ban on the non-therapeutic use of a broader range of antibiotics in farm animals. 

In December, the FDA admitted that it had given up a plan first announced in 1977 to withdraw approval for penicillin and tetracyclines in animal feed.

Apparently, the FDA has decided to try to get drug companies and the meat and poultry industries to reduce the use of antibiotics voluntarily.

Good luck with that. 

Philip Brasher writes in the Des Moines Register that the new restrictions will hit hardest on the chicken industry, which uses the drugs for disease prevention. 

He says the FDA’s 2008  proposal would have blocked hog producers from treating illnesses that aren’t listed on the label.   He quotes the chief veterinarian for the National Pork Producers Council:

We are pleased that FDA balanced the need to protect animal health with their concerns about resistance.

This is not about animal health.  Nobody is trying to stop the use of antibiotics to treat animal disease.  At issue is their use as growth promoters or feed savers.

Congresswoman Louise Slaughter (Dem-NY) understandably views the FDA’s action as “tepid.”  She has introduced the  Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act to deal with the problem of non-therapeutic antibiotic use.  Of the FDA’s proposal, she said:

This is a modest first step by the FDA…but we’re really just looking at the tip of the iceberg. We don’t have time for the FDA to ploddingly take half-measures. We are staring at a massive public health threat in the rise of antibiotic-resistant superbugs. We need to start acting with the swiftness and decisiveness this problem deserves.

We do indeed.  Her bill deserves much support.   Public health should not be left up to the meat, poultry, and drug industries to decide.

Addition, January 12: I missed the New York Times editorial on this issue:

It’s time for the F.D.A. to consider the public’s health as carefully as it considers the interests of intensive agriculture and pharmaceutical companies.

I was interested to read FoodSafetyNews this morning and learn about the FDA’s new count of the number and pounds of antibiotics used to promote the growth of farm animals used as food.

Because this is the first time the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine has produced such a count, it is not possible to say whether the numbers are going up or down.  But the agency is now requiring meat producers to report on antibiotic use so we now have a baseline for measuring progress.

The FDA has been concerned about the use and misuse of animal antibiotics for some time now, so much so that in June it issued guidance on The Judicious Use of Medically Important Antimicrobial Drugs in Food-Producing Animals.

In the Federal Register notice announcing the guidance, the FDA explains:

Misuse and overuse of antimicrobial drugs creates selective evolutionary pressure that enables antimicrobial resistant bacteria to increase in numbers more rapidly than antimicrobial susceptible bacteria and thus increases the opportunity for
individuals to become infected by resistant bacteria. Because antimicrobial drug use contributes to the emergence of drug resistant organisms, these important drugs must be used judiciously in both animal and human medicine to slow the development of resistance. Using these drugs judiciously means that unnecessary or inappropriate use should be avoided….

In regard to the use of antimicrobial drugs in animals, concerns have been raised by the public and components of the scientific and public health communities that a significant contributing factor to antimicrobial resistance is the use of medically important antimicrobial drugs in foodproducing animals for production or growth-enhancing purposes.

The overuse of antibiotics in farm animal production was a key focus of the 2009 report of the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production. Our conclusion: the overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture is an enormous risk to public health and should be stopped.

The FDA report may be short and issued without comment, but it is a sign that the FDA is taking steps to address this serious public health problem.

I served as a member of the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production which issued its final report in April 2008.  Our most important recommendation: reduce the widespread use of antibiotics as growth promoters and as a routine method of preventing infections.  Why?  Because of increasing evidence of human resistance to the kinds of antibiotics used in farm animal production and to related antibiotics.

You think everyone involved in production of farm animals understands the dangers of continued overuse of these drugs?  Not a chance.  A coalition of 20 meat producing groups has asked Congress not to restrict their use of antibiotics.  The American Meat Institute has issued a statement condemning our report.  The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) has done even more.  It just issued its own report taking on the Pew Commission’s antibiotic recommendations.  Why the ferocity and why now?  Congress has submitted a bill – the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act of 2009 (PAMTA) – that would restrict use of several antibiotics in farm animal production.

Ralph Loglisci, who was the Pew Commission’s communication director, has an excellent blog post dealing with the AVMA statement.  If you want to understand what all this is about, take a look at it.

While these debates continue, antibiotic-resistant bacteria are increasingly turning up in our food supply.  Tell your representatives to support PAMTA!

The Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production (of which I was a member) recommended as its #1 priority the elimination of antibiotics for promoting growth and other unnecesary purposes in farm animals.  I discussed this report in a previous post.

There is much fuss about this issue this week because the House is holding hearings on the Preservation for Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act.  If passed, this will phase out the use of seven classes of antibiotics important to human health that are currently allowed to be used as growth promoters in animal agriculture.  The FDA testified in favor of the act.  So did members of the Pew Commission: Robert Martin, Fedele Baucio, and Bill and Nicolette Niman.

So who could possibly be opposed to such a good idea?  How about the American Veterinary Medical Association, for starters, apparently more worried about its members’ self interest than about sensible use of antibiotics.

Maybe we’ll get lucky and the Congress will do the right thing on this one.

Update July 16: Ralph Logisci, who helped staff the Pew Commission, posted a blog on the movement to ban non-therapeutic antibiotics on Civil Eats.  It goes into considerable depth on the issues and is well worth reading. And the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) has just produced a report on eliminating the use of non-thereapuetic antibiotics in, of all things, ethanol production.  Who knew?  Turns out they use antibiotics to control fermentation.  Oops.  Not a good idea.  IATP says plenty of alternatives are available and the ethanol industry should adopt them.

July 20 update: in case you haven’t seen it, here’s the meat industry’s July 9 statement in opposition to the bill attempting to ban antibiotic use.

The FDA issued its most recent report on antibiotics late last year: 2022 Summary Report On Antimicrobials Sold or Distributed for Use in Food-Producing Animals, along with Antimicrobial Sales and Distribution Data 2013-2022.

It did this in response to public concerns about antibiotic use in food animals: if antibiotics are used at subtherapeutic doses, they might induce microbial resistance to drugs used to treat diseases in humans.

This is not a theoretical concern.  It’s a real problem.

It’s also a problem because the vast majority of antibiotics were used as growth promoters or to prevent infections in animals crowded together—not to treat disease.

In 2014 or so, the FDA ruled that medically important antibiotics could no longer be used as growth promoters in farm animals.  That rule went into effect in 2017.

The FDA’s good news: the amounts of antibiotics used in farm animals has declined since then.

Are medically important antibiotics still used for non-therapeutic purposes?

The report says that since 2017, zero antibiotics are administered for growth promotion.

If you wonder whether this is really true (as I do), consider that $11.2 million kilograms of antibiotics were used in food animals in 2022.  This is a decrease from the 15.6 million kg used in 2015, but still a lot.

Of these drugs, 63% are administered in feed, and 31% in water.

All antibiotics still used as growth promoters are supposed to be drugs not used in human medicine.

I’m not the only skeptic on this one.  See:

I.  The Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s Antibiotics in agriculture: The blurred line between growth promotion and disease prevention.

In an investigation published today, the Bureau revealed how US farm animals are still being dosed with antibiotics vital to human health, despite efforts to curtail such usage and combat the spread of deadly superbugs. We also found that a regulatory loophole means that using antibiotics to make animals fatter – a process known as growth promotion – is technically still possible, despite this practice being banned in January 2017.

II.  Nature: Antibiotic use in farming set to soar despite drug-resistance fears. Analysis finds antimicrobial drug use in agriculture is much higher than reported.

III.  Vox: Big Meat just can’t quit antibiotics: Meat production is making lifesaving drugs less effective. Where’s the FDA?

According to an analysis published in September by the Natural Resources Defense Council and One Health Trust, medically important antibiotics are increasingly going to livestock instead of humans. In 2017, the meat industry purchased 62 percent of the US supply. By 2020, it rose to 69 percent.

Does the FDA check?  It has guidance for industry on The Judicious Use of Medically Important Antimicrobial Drugs in Food-Producing Animals, but this guidance is non-binding.

Obviously, the FDA needs to do more.  Its officials told Vox:

I’m trying to keep up with what’s happening with cultivated meat.  So far, the FDA has approved a couple of cultivated chicken cell companies, and these are selling “chicken” in a couple of restaurants, one in San Francisco and the other in Washington DC.

The big issue: scaling cell production up enough to have product to sell.  It takes lots of cells–billions? trillions?—to make a portion big enough to eat.

Here’s what’s going on in this area in the U.S. and U.K.

• • • ‘A defining feature of stem cells is that they can become other cells’: Strategies for the use of stem cells in cultivated meat productionThe production of cultivated meat will need stable cell lines from multiple different species to be successful. It is produced from stem cells, which are highly flexible and can create yields with the potential to be far greater in volume than the meat the cells originated from…. Read more.  
    • ‘Meating’ demand: Animal-based proteins versus cell-based agricultureAs demand for meat and poultry continues to grow, Food Manufacture explores what is driving sales of animal-based protein and whether or not the advent of cell-based meat is truly the herald of things to come, or a half-baked pipedream limited by a lack of resources…. Read more. How cultivated meat could be the key to avoiding the development of antimicrobial resistance: While the ‘routine use’ of antibiotics in animal agriculture is banned in the EU, increasing globalisation can make it difficult to avoid imported meat reared in this way. While the routine use of antibiotics can increase the risk of antimicrobial resistance, cultivated meat could provide a means of mitigating this…. Read more
      • • UK Government looking to fast-track legalisation of cultivated meat: The UK is set to fast-track the approval of cultivated meat as part of a partnership with Israel, the Telegraph has reported. Read more
        • Extracellular opens ‘Europe’s largest’ pilot plant for cultivated meat: Food tech firm Extracellular has opened ‘Europe’s largest’ contract pilot facility dedicated to cultivated meat and seafood production at its site in Bristol. Read more
        • Solving the mainstream adoption of alternative meats on a molecular level: Agilent Technologies global food segment director Lorna De Leoz explores the future of alternative proteins and how new advances in analytical tools can boost mainstream adoption of plant-based and cultured protein. Read more
        • Brazilian giant JBS begins construction on cultivated protein research centre: The JBS Biotech Innovation Centre is expected to open before the end of 2024 after construction work commenced this month (September 2023). Read more
        • ‘For the industry to succeed, there will need to be a ramping up of investment’: The past and future of the cultivated meat market: The number of deals in the cultivated meat market in the first eight months of 2023 has significantly declined since 2022, a report by financial advisory firm Oghma Partners shows. However, strong government investment and potential regulatory approval could provide a boost for the sector…. Read more
        • Episode 8: Alternative proteins: Tune in to this month’s Food Manufacture podcast, where we talk plant-based proteins and the future of the meat alternatives market. Read more. 

Douglas Frantz & Catherine Collins.  Salmon Wars: The Dark Underbelly of America’s Favorite Fish.  Henry Holt, 2022.  (355 pages)

I was asked to do a blurb for this one.  Here’s what I said:

Salmon Wars is a deep dive into the damage caused by current fish-farming methods to ocean environments, wild fish and their habitats, and to the farmed fish themselves.  It is also a dismal account of the failure of governments to stop such practices.  Salmon farming needs reform.  Until it does, read this book, and you will never eat farmed salmon again.

As for what to do about the hazards of salmon farming—lice, pollution, reduction of wild salmon, escape from pens, requirement for feeder fish and the depletion of those stocks, the authors have three suggestions:

(1) Know the risks and rewards of eating farmed salmon and insist on more transparency.

(2) Take responsibility for insisting on better ways of raising farmed salmon.

And (3)

The third step is for governments to stop putting a thumb on the scale when weighing economic interests versus the public wellbeing.  Governments should take responsibility for protecting the environment and public health.  They should adopt strict curbs on the use of chemicals by salmon farmers.  They should require notification of all relevant authorities of every escape or suspected escape, and those reports should be made public.  Food labels should be thorough, accurate, and reflect how the salmon was raised…There must be similar global efforts to protect the public health and the welfare of salmon.

This is a hard-hitting book and, as you might expect, it’s gotten some pushback.

Saving Seafood, a group that “conducts media and public relations outreach on behalf of the seafood industry,” says “New ‘Salmon Wars’ Book Is Full of Fictions. Here Are the Facts.”  Here are a couple of examples:

FICTION: Farmed salmon are crammed into cages.

FACT: Salmon occupy less than 4 percent of a typical marine cage. Farmers intentionally keep stocking densities low so fish have room to swim, grow, and mimic natural schooling patterns.

Farmers take great care to ensure the well-being of their salmon. Fish are vaccinated against several diseases, and pristine marine cage conditions are ensured with proper siting, regular fallowing (leaving sites unused), underwater cameras, and diver inspections.

FICTION: Farmed salmon are doused with pesticides and antibiotics.

FACT: Antibiotic use on salmon farms is far lower than that of any other agricultural animal producing industry in the world. In the rare instances when treatment is necessary, it is prescribed and overseen by licensed veterinarians under the oversight of government regulators.

In 2012 I visited a salmon farm above the Arctic Circle in Norway’s and wrote a post about it.

That one looked pretty good.  Now?  Others?  Who knows?

My recommendation: Visit one if you can.  Short of that, read this book.  Than decide what you think are the facts.

It’s not enough that the meat industry is attacking plant-based alternative meat products (see my post on how the Zombie Center for Consumer Freedom took on that job).

Now, to my amazement, one brand is attacking another and in a full-page ad in the New York Times, no less.

Here’s what it says:

Enough.  Enough with the hyper-processed ingredients, GMOs, unnecessary additives and fillers, and fake blood…People deserve plant-based protein that is developed in a kitchen, not a lab.

Really?  Lightlife burgers taking on Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods?  This so reminds me so much of the sugar industry taking on corn syrup and vice versa.

Does Lightlife have a case?

Food Navigator has a terrific comparison of the ingredients of plant-based burgers.  These are just the ones at issue here (there are more).

OK.  Lightlife has fewer ingredients, but it still looks plenty ultraprocessed.  Like the others, it:

• Does not resemble the foods from which it is derived.
• Is industrially produced.
• Contains unfamiliar ingredients (e.g., pea protein, natural flavors, modified cellulose)
• Cannot be made in home kitchens (unless you happen to have those ingredients as well as beet powder and cherry powder handy).

I don’t buy that there is a significant difference here.

Impossible Foods calls this ad “cynical and disingenuous.”  It also wrote an open letter of rebuttal.

The campaign leans on spurious arguments typically used by the meat industry: Attack Impossible’s products not based on their indisputable quality, nutrition, wholesomeness or deliciousness, but based on the number of ingredients — a logic-defying concept with zero relevance to health or product quality, intended to distract consumers from the obvious inferiority of Lightlife and Maple Leaf’s products.

Beyond Meat sent a statement to Food Dive

If Lightlife were clear on our ingredients, they would see that our food is made from simple, plant-based ingredients. With no GMOs. No synthetic additives. No carcinogens. No hormones. No antibiotics. No cholesterol. Our foods are designed to have the same taste and texture as animal-based meat, giving more consumers more options that are better for them and the planet.

From my standpoint, the differences between these products are minimal.

The real questions are about the relative benefits of meat versus plant-based alternatives.  A recent review in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems addresses those questions.  In my original post, I said “At best, it finds moderate benefits for nutritional vlue, greenhouse gas emissions, and land use, but no to limited benefits for the other measures it evaluated.  It found even less benefit for cell-based meats (which are not yet on the market).”  This, as explained below, misrepresents their findings, which refer only to the state of the research literature.

My bottom line?  These products fall in the category of ultraprocessed and are off my dietary radar.  I can hardly believe that attacking each other does any good for them or anyone or anything else.

Correction

Brent Kim, one of the authors of this study writes:

We wanted to clear up some confusion that seems to have arisen around one of our tables…Table 1, cited in your post, describes the degree to which those different impacts have been characterized in the literature. “Limited,” for example, indicates that there has been a limited number of studies on the topic. It does not reflect our findings about the relative benefits.

To clarify, here’s what we found:

• Plant-based meat substitutes offered substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, water use, and land use relative to farmed beef. The benefits compared to other meats (e.g., pork, chicken, fish) were less pronounced.
• For cell-based meat, the potential environmental footprints were generally lower than those of farmed beef and comparable to or worse than those of other farmed meats and seafood… although further research is needed.
• There has been limited research on nutrition, chronic disease, and food safety implications associated with consuming meat alternatives, and occupational and community health implications associated with their production.
• For example, it is unknown whether replacing farmed meat with plant-based substitutes would offer similar nutritional and health benefits as compared to less-processed plant foods.

I stand corrected and reproduce this with Dr. Kim’s permission.  To my bottom line above, I should have added: more research needed!