Limiting Antibiotics in Animals
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I've posted this before, but some people may have missed it.
"Defeating the superbugs" (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01ms5c6) has a segment showing bacteria developing resistance to antibiotics.
(http://v6.tinypic.com/player.swf?file=24goih4&s=6) (Sorry about the lousy host; YouTube's content sniffing detects this as BBC property and blocks it.)
They have a slab of jelly. The jelly has sections of differing strength of antibiotic. There's a section with no antibiotic, then 10x, then 100x then 1000x. (They cannot dissolve any more antibiotic into the jelly at that point.)
A time lapse camera shows the bacteria growing, and developing resistance to each section.
It's an excellent bit of video.
For example, develop bacteria that can digest some pollutants.
It and genetic engineering are pretty much exactly how such traits are developed.
But really, this is just the shortest of short answers. If you want to know more about how these things can evolve, you should read about Richard Lenski's long-term experiments: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_exp...
http://cfpub.epa.gov/ncer_abstracts/index.cfm/fuseaction/dis...
It's a very understood method but it's really difficult to develop proper methodology since almost every experiment will be different. The success percentage is also relatively low and is like playing the lottery (literally, you never know if the evolution is even physically possible or it might be so statistically rare that you'd need millions of parallel cultures).
However, some kinds of things like strong detergents, high temperatures, and so on qould require too much change to protect against so the bacteria can't evolve resistance to it. (sure, there are bacteria out there that might better resist these extreme conditions but you won't easily be able to evolve any bacteria you want to do the same)
It would still take a while, but bacteria have very short generations and can support huge populations, so it's far, far easier for them to evolve than anything else.
In a properly-applied therapeutic situation, there is no such safe haven, and one hopes that the subject's immune system would be able to exterminate the much smaller load once the antibiotic's done its job, instead of leaving any stragglers behind to develop resistance.
I take a certain comfort in the notion that this price difference reflects the true cost of producing meat. Likewise, everything is locally sourced because there isn't really any other option, so everything taste fresh. Produce is only available when its in season, but this adds a fun sense of anticipation as the seasons change.
That's one point of view. The other point of view is that feeding antibiotics to cattle improves yield. Transporting produce long distances ensures that it can be grown where conditions are best, and flying fruits in from Chile means that supermarket customers can find what they crave even in the middle of winter.
The US has a long tradition of asking "can we?" not "should we?" Sometimes, as with the Apolo mission, this is a very good thing. Other times, as with the issue addressed here, it can be rather bad.
Edit: Also, as I always do when this topic comes up, I'll point to this extremely useful list on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_antibiotics . This battle is occurring on two fronts: the bugs are becoming more resistant, and we're having an increasingly hard time finding new weapons to fight them off.
Dried apricots cost $5-$10/lb. Does that make them overpriced compared to fresh apricots?
For regulators, the incentives might be skewed by lobbying and perhaps corruption.
On the other hand, relying on regulators seems to be fundamentally flawed. Some of the domains that these people are regulating are highly specific, niche, and complex. Where is the government going to get people who are well-versed and experienced in these domains if not the industries being regulated? And, once you are a regulator, from where do you source alternative job opportunities if not the companies you are regulating?
| Unfortunately, this is the way in which
| "market forces" fail us. When all motivations
| ultimately spring forth from ever-higher profits
| and market dominance, how can "doing the right
| thing" for society as a whole win out on a
| consistent basis?
- The people running the company will be selfish and want to minimize the future risks to their offspring/descendents.
- If the company uses a practice that is bad, all of their customers will just boycott / switch to a competitor.
Reality:
- The people running the company may not have any offspring and therefore not much riding on the future.
- Most of these companies all use the same practices, so it makes boycotting hard. Switching to competitors that don't use these practices are more expensive (i.e. organic), and food is something that people need.
- The detriments of certain practices may not be known right away, and stopping them later could lead to lower short-term profits (and maybe not even increased long-term profits, just betterment of society), and Wall Street doesn't like this because all Wall Street is concerned about is numbers going up or down (all other considerations are not considered).
- Most people have issues with long-term thinking. Things that happen slowly over long time-spans don't seem to register.
> Switching to competitors that don't use these practices are more expensive (i.e. organic), and food is something that people need.
I do agree that people see this as an impediment. However, people use this excuse way too often - as a crutch, in my opinion. We (Americans, in my case) spend a pitifully small percentage of our incomes on food: http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/01/america-food-...
That's not even getting into whom the largest consumers are. I'll bet that there is a lot of interfacing between companies like McDonald's/KFC/etc where other corporate interests are attempting to push down prices. Then you end up with multiple layers of corporate interests that end up insulating the consumer.
All of this can also be side-stepped (at least in this case) by moving to a vegetarian or vegan diet, but that's a large leap for some people and there are stigmas attached to it by some in society (i.e. 'dirty hippies,' etc).
What's more alarming is that bacteria frequently exchange genetic material between species. Just because the resistance genes have not been discovered in a pathogen does not mean that the gene cannot be easily and instantly transferred from another species, and the chance of that happening is greatly increased if the environment is flooded with resistance genes due to selection by human use of antibiotics.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=horizontal+gene+transfe...
I'd assume epidemiology is not domestically constrained: the antibiotic/agricultural practices of one nation impact all others.
I have no idea what is standard practice for domestic agriculture in my own country. Things I think I "know" about agriculture are distorted through the prism of American cultural influence - documentaries like Food Inc., are writ large in the imagination even where these are only concerned with domestic affairs.
What resources exist that document antibiotic use on a global basis?
________________________
And for Pete's sake, I do note that I agree with her wholeheartedly on the substance. It's just the name that struck me out of left field ;-)
What affects an animal has for the most part no relationship to how it affects a human
Yes, there are relatively few instances where how something affects humans is the same as how it affects an animal, but leaving that up to chance as we do research is absolutely not the way to do this!
PCP, which has a violence inducing affect on humans is sometimes used as a horse tranquilizer.
Not only are humans biologically, physiologically different than animals, but each animal is biological/physiologically different from one another.
Due to the fact that animal experimentation/research for the most part (relatively speaking) has not had positive results, researchers started to rely on more extreme methods, such as injecting human DNA into animals so that the animals become more human when they do their research. This causes bacteria/virii which normally would not have been able to penetrate a human, to learn through animals being used as a human DNA surrogate, and therefore becoming stronger and knowing how to attack human cells. Hence the topic of this article and antibiotics becoming less and less effective.
edit, references:
1. Lethal Medicine (Documentary)
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iYOTH_krTk
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF3yn4-9obw
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8Rp9xxW2yc
Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ld8F9yhUb4M
2. http://www.livescience.com/7962-human-dna-injected-animals.h...
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/7681252/ns/health-cloning_and_stem...
-In 2004, researchers looking to study viral infections injected human blood stem cells into pigs. The unexpected result: pig cells, human cells and some that combined bits of both developed in the pigs' blood.
-In 2005, researchers created a flock of sheep with bits of human organs growing inside of them, part of an effort (alson carried out in pigs) to eventually create human organ factories.
-Some lab monkeys pack a human form of the Huntington's gene which allow scientists to investigate the development of the disease.
-There are mice with human-like livers that allow studying the effects of drugs.
Researchers can take human cancerous (cells) and transplant them into an animal to study. So the animal has human cancerous cells growing on it.
The human DNA doesn't change the animal, it grows on top of it.
See: http://emice.nci.nih.gov/aam/mouse/transplantation-mouse-mod...
I do wish there was a scientifically-literate anti-vivisection group.
Watch the documentary I linked, it includes a bunch of scientifically-literate people.
"PCP, which has a violence inducing affect on humans is sometimes used as a horse tranquilizer."
First of all, PCP _can_ have a violence inducing effect, you make it sound like it always does. Second, so what? This doesn't prove that animal research is misleading. If you give a human the same dosage per weight as you'd use to tranquilize a horse, the human would be tranquilized as well. Just like with ketamine which is used as an animal tranquillizer a lot and at the same time in lower doses has all kinds of effects on humans. And the other way around works as well btw: if you give animals less than the dosage needed to tranquillize them, you see similar effects like dizziness.
In this instance the inference is that livestock are just fed mountains of antibiotics indiscriminately. Are you kidding me? Why would anyone do that? While not as expensive as meds for humans, veterinary medications are not cheap and no operator is going to waste money treating a whole herd unless it is absolutely necessary.
Furthermore, take some time to read up on the FDA website about how livestock production is regulated. It is far from the free for all that is so frequently represented.
If you are interested in a very educated and thorough perspective on how livestock are cared for at a feedyard, check out this blog by a Dartmouth educated operator in Nebraska: http://feedyardfoodie.wordpress.com/
On a semi-related note, can you name the product that was responsible for the last three E. coli outbreaks here in the States?
And if you really want to speak about regulations in US, an appropriate page is one Google away: http://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/GuidanceComplianceEnforc...
Notice the wording about "voluntary", and it's 2012. It was actually developed due to that "FUD" you're writing about. Note "Increase production by making the animal gain weight faster and by improving the animal’s ability to convert the food it eats (improved feed efficiency)."
Also, you should understand what types of antibiotics are used in feed versus those that are used in treatment. The feed isn't some concoction of all antibiotics available on the market, and most food animal antibiotics aren't used in humans.
30 billion pounds just last year. That's half a billion cubic feet, or a pile about 800 feet high. And while the more or less official definition of "mountain" is 1,000 feet, I don't think it provides much solace that it takes 2 years instead of 1 for America's livestock to consume a literal mountain of antibiotics.
I also think your billion is wrong. According the Union of Concerned Scientists, the 30 billion was the cost of the antibiotics, not the weight. The antibiotics weighed 24 million pounds. Besides, what does the total mass have to do with prudent use? If I said we used 100 billion pounds to save people, would you consider that acceptable?
You also need to put that number in context. In 2010, American meat companies produced: 26.4 billion pounds of beef 22.5 billion pounds of pork 5.8 billion pounds of turkey 313 million pounds of veal, lamb and mutton 37.2 billion pounds of chicken
Finally, there is no clear evidence that the proper use of antibiotics in food animals has ever led to a disease resistant bacteria in humans. Don't you find it much more alarming that your GP will prescribe antibiotics to common visitors just to get them out the door? It's far more likely you're going to die purely because someone next to you won't leave the doctor until they get an antibiotic, regardless of their health status.
But I would like to point out the final paragraph here is pure FUD rhetoric. "Don't you find it much more alarming", "It's far more likely" (with no evidence to support claim).
The problem here isn't how frequently antibiotics used in agriculture cause resistance, it's the scale of the problem once they do. Sub-prime mortgage derivatives were traded millions of times without a problem, but once the system broke things got very bad very fast. That's the best analogy I can think of for antibiotic resistance, there is a massive systemic risk, being ignored for short-term profits.
Regardless, somewhere between 3/4 and 4/5 of antibiotics used in agriculture is used "sub-therapeutically", merely to increase the growth rate of animals and not to treat disease.
Cattle raised on corn (aka, most cattle raised for human consumption) require continuous use of antibiotics in their feed to prevent rumen diseases. The rumen was "designed" to digest grass and cellulose, not corn. But we feed cows corn because it's cheaper than grazing, and the cows are meaty enough for slaughter after just 18 months.
That link you provided is very feel-good-family, but can you provide some science?
[1] http://feedyardfoodie.wordpress.com/category/antibiotics-hor...
[2] http://feedyardfoodie.wordpress.com/2011/12/13/the-misunders...
Edit: Here's an article discussing the enormous use of tetracycline in agriculture:
http://www.livablefutureblog.com/2010/12/new-fda-numbers-rev...
So the agricultural use of human useful antibiotics is at a similar or higher level than the use of ionophore feed additives.