Antibiotics in the Animals We Eat | The Scientist

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/31895/title/Antibiotics-in-the-Animals-We-Eat/


While US farmers and other stakeholders have argued tenaciously for the continuation of subtherapeutic dosing, Europeans adopted the “precautionary principle,” instituting sequential bans on the practice beginning in the mid-1990s. Arguments on both sides of this issue continue to the present day, but evidence of the negative consequences of low-dose antibiotic feeding has been mounting. Since 1976, several persuasive scientific studies have illustrated how animals fed low-dose antibiotics not only propagate resistant bacteria, but spread these resistant strains to farmers, their families, community residents, and ultimately, hospitalized patients. Particularly worrisome is the continued use in animals of antibiotics that are close structural relatives of those that are used in human medicine.  It is feared that, in time, these drugs will lose potency as bacteria express “cross-resistance” to the related drugs.

Iv-B business acts as an overtone to Oy-R battles against R disease. R acts in effect like terrorism in a population, trying to eradicate it as it hides between healthy cells like terrorists hide between civilians. Attacking these germs too much such as with an antiseptic environment for children can lead to mutations and resistance just like suppressing too much R dissent can lead to more R people and organized Ro resistance with mobs and demonstrations.

Some researchers have countered that the resistant bacterial strains found in serious hospital infections bear little or no resemblance to the strains found in farm animals. They argue that eliminating antibiotics on the farm would harm animal health, result in economic loss, and have little or no impact on reducing human morbidity and mortality. However, these rebuttals overlook the inherently promiscuous nature of bacteria—in particular, the transferable genetic elements they often carry (e.g., bacterial plasmids, transposons, phages) that can readily share DNA segments bearing resistance genes. They pass among strains, species, and even diverse bacterial genera, rearranging and accumulating even more resistance genes. Tracking the evolution of such complex bacterial exchanges from food animals to people poses a daunting challenge, making definitive proof elusive. But we argue that the preponderance of evidence, coupled with a diminishing pipeline of new antibiotics and the appearance of multidrug-resistant “superbugs,” warrants closer scrutiny of how and where we are using these antimicrobials—and the adoption of stricter measures of control.