Nice, now let's please pass laws to prohibit this being given to farm animals under high penalties and international prosecution.
60% of infectious diseases in humans originate in animals, and 75% of emerging infectious diseases in humans originate in animals [3].
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4638249/
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1804117/
[3] https://www.cdc.gov/onehealth/basics/zoonotic-diseases.html
Livestock should only get antibiotics if they come down with an infection and are diagnosed and treated by a veterinarian. If a bunch of the livestock would get sick without preemptive antibiotics then I probably don't think that method of farming should be legal, and I would be glad to pay whatever higher prices would be necessary to abolish it.
Some quick googling indicates that this practice both increases meat production by 10-30%, and protects animals from a lot of suffering, as they spend their lives mostly healthy.
That said, yeah, we can't keep doing this, and we have to pay the cost. Let's just not pretend there is no cost.
(I'm not a farmer. I have no idea what the impact of this practice would be. However, as a naive person I definitely would strongly prefer to reserve the medicinal powers of antibiotics for humans or individually-sick animals, not huge animal populations.)
My only point is that this isn't done by stupid greedy farmers for no reason. It's a practical and profitable practice that has had a lot of short term benefits both for farmers, consumers and even farm animals. But it also has to end.
The use of human antibiotics in livestock has already been banned in the US by the FDA.
https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2018-12-19/ant...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_use_in_livestock#Un...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/health/antibiotics-orange...
Independent sources say that more than 90% of all farms with pigs have an MRSA infection. The butcheries reported in 2014 that 88% of all pigs was infected with MRSA. Every 1 in 3 pack of pork is infected and weak and elderly people should be careful with pork in general because of this risk.
High AB usage is one factor in developing and spreading resistance, but it's way more complicated. For example the resistance genes also have to jump onto a bacterium that is pathogenic...
Maybe true but I don't see the post you're replying to saying that. If you are saying that, a reference to some research showing that would be welcome.
> but it's way more complicated
surely true, but it doesn't mean antibiotic overuse isn't a damn good starting point for resistance to develop.
"The three mechanisms considered are as follows 1: direct infection with resistant bacteria from an animal source, 2: breaches in the species barrier followed by sustained transmission in humans of resistant strains arising in livestock, and 3: transfer of resistance genes from agriculture into human pathogens. Of these, mechanism 1 is the most readily estimated, while significant is small in comparison with the overall burden of resistant disease. Several cases of mechanism 2 are known [so it's been demonstrated to happen], and we discuss the likely livestock origins of [some bacteria] it is hard to assess in robust fashion. More difficult yet to study is the contribution of mechanism 3, which may be the most important of all."
To summarise, a little, some known, and we don't know.
From the summary, and again I'm quoting selectively so be warned:
"The limited data available make it hard to quantify the relationship between antibiotic use in animals and the occurrence of clinical resistance. As we have shown, while there is considerable evidence associating antimicrobial use in agriculture with resistant pathogens in livestock and in the food supply, the evidence for human health risks directly attributable to agricultural antibiotics runs the gamut from speculative to scant"
Summary: possible real threat, too little data to evaluate.
Further, again from the conclusion:
"Once these [antibiotic-resistant] strains have emerged, it might be only a matter of time before they cross the species barrier and adapt to living in humans, at which time there is very little regulation of agriculture can do to prevent their persistence in the clinical setting. The greatest value of reducing agricultural antibiotic use now may be in maintaining a status quo that, while far from ideal, is greatly preferable to the alternative."
Summary: we scientists don't know but we have reason to be very concerned.
These are my selective quotes and my interpretations, but I personally don't see that they support your position.
Up to this point the link between agricultural AB usage and human pathogenic infections with resistant strains is quite theoretical and has relatively weak evidence.
Apparently these molecules are very hard to build resistance against. Bacteria evolve resistances to many ABs from scratch in lab conditions. If more is discovered about the mechanism of these two drugs, one could speculate about a potential resistance gene.
Is it enough to "adapt" existing genes in most microbes, like with Penicilline? Is a novel gene, traveling on a vector, required to defuse it (like with Carbapanemes)? Or is it extremely unlikely that pathogens evolve any way to counter it?
The latter could be because the mechanism of action is not trivially countered. You can compare it with patching vulnerabilities. A vulnerability is sometimes not addressable without crippling a business critical feature.
Then we might want to use these drugs in animals and less in Humans, because we know more about how the old drugs work and their side effects.
Anyway the OP makes a lot of sense. Resistance is known to increase when antibiotics are used. If we use them less (ie. not on farm animals) then it seems reasonable that resistance development will be lessened and the drugs' useful lifespan will be extended.
Much as I hate to say it, speaking as a veggie, farm animals are a commodity and moderately expendable.
And I much prefer taking well known antibiotics as long as they work.
Agreed, but you may not have that choice for much longer.
> I'm thinking, 10X the application might reduce the useful lifetime by months out of decades
Possibly, sure. And possibly not. Maybe 1% extra use reduces the drug's working life by 100 times. Without data either claim could be true.
If our current antibiotics are becoming less useful, then create new one. There's nothing magic about the ones we're using now. They were just the first ones we came across. Like VHS vs Betamax. Lets get on with it.
The argument for the standard view is simple: The more "bugs" are exposed to antibiotics, the more opportunity/reason they have to develop resistance to it.
It's a big-data problem - what are the regression stats for each independent variable? And is 'exposure' the important one?
Antibiotic management is an ongoing topic and effort, but you can't make independent countries comply.
Also, the amount of antibiotic used is not as much of a problem for AB resistance as some people using the "as candy" metaphor may think. The epidemiology of AB resistance is way more complicated, as the spreading of resistance requires multiple factors to coincide. Like the right resistance gene, the right strain, infection chains etc
And even in industrialized countries, crooked vets have abused reserve antibiotics not intended for animals.