Change Your World Week Fall 2021 (Archived)
Who's In Your Food?
The Problem?
It is the question of the century, “Does antibiotic use in animals used for human consumption affect human health down the road?” It is a widely debated topic. The scientists in the field of medicine on one side, and the farmers of our country on the other. Antibiotics have served many purposes in the agriculture industry. Pig sows are not given enough time to heal and recover between births, weakening their immune systems, and are treated with antibiotics as a “preventative measure.” Chickens, pigs, and cattle raised for the meat industry live in crowded, dirty quarters, weakening their immune system as well. This puts them at an increased risk for disease transmission. Antibiotics wipe out healthy gut bacteria, which would normally regulate weight gain in animals. This has been used as an advantage, and until a year ago, the animals were given antibiotics to promote increased growth. According to an article in medical news today titled “Drug resistance: Does antibiotic use in animals affect human health?” antibiotic resistance is currently a global threat. When humans consume meat treated with antibiotics, the antibiotic itself is not transmitted to the human. However, the animal is born with normal gut bacteria just like people. When they are sick, breeding, or just given antibiotics to promote growth, its gut bacteria become antibiotic resistant. When we as humans consume the meat, and get food poisoning, from the bacteria in the meat, we now have an infection from an antibiotic resistant bacteria.
Solutions:
There are many solutions to this issue. One of the most obvious ones is to stop giving the animals antibiotics as preventatives. Instead, cleaner cages, more time for healing, clean food and water, cleaner living environments are all valuable options. This allows for less growth of bacteria. Having a sick baby available for sick animals to be quarantined would ensure that the sick animals are not infecting healthy animals with bacteria. Often, when one animal is sick, the entire herd is treated as a preventative. Instead, they should only treat the animals that are sick. Don’t medicate unless it is necessary.
Opposing Reviews:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1473309903004900 tells us antibiotics were first discovered in the 1940’s. This was not all too long ago. New antibiotics are being discovered at a steady rate, but many do not understand the length of time and research that goes into discovering a new antibiotic. Recent years show that antibiotics have not only been overused but misused as well. This combined with the scarcity of new antibiotic discoveries over the years has sent antibiotic resistance into a global health crisis. The following article states “Some argue that the impact of use of antibiotics in animals—whether therapeutic or as growth promoters—pales by comparison with human use, and that efforts should be concentrated on the misuse of antibiotics in people.” Meaning, that the overuse and misuse of antibiotics in people is a larger focal point than the idea that we acquire resistant bacteria through human consumption. Another opposing argument comes from the farmers themselves. The farmer's livelihood is based solely off the price they get from the animals they produce. Overall, the famers state they believe it is much more cost effective for them to treat the entire herd with antibiotics, when one or a few have a snotty nose, then risk the entire herd getting infected, and becoming worse. Also, the sooner they can grow these animals to weight, and get them to market, the more, and sooner they get paid. They are just trying to make a living, while they are very uninformed about the future consequences of what they are doing.
Pledge:
We are currently asking members of the community to do their part in the fight against antibiotic resistance. We are asking that you pledge to say No to antibiotic raised meat. The more of us that stand up against antibiotic resistance, the closer we are to slowing it down, and eventually helping to change the world.