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Comment by mullingitover | Hacker News Reader

Oddly enough, I can't find a single reference to farms using antibiotics as a growth enhancer in this article. Isn't that the single biggest source of antibiotic-resistant bacteria?

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Yup. "The isolation of antibiotic-resistant Salmonella from Retail Ground Meats" in The New England Journal of Medicine. http://www.foodpoisonjournal.com/uploads/file/retailmeat.pdf

Agricultural use of antibiotics has definitely been an issue, but perhaps they're trying to state narrow conclusions in the name of scientific rigor. Fortunately, in the US at least, the practice is being discontinued. http://www.fda.gov/animalveterinary/guidancecomplianceenforc...

Not everyone is so sanguine about the effect of the FDA's action. For example, NY Times food writer Mark Bittman:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/18/opinion/bittman-the-fdas-n...

In California, though, there is much stronger action stirring in the state legislature, although it will need far more public support to become a possibility:

http://www.sfgate.com/health/article/Ban-sought-on-animal-an...

From what I understand, it isn't usually used as a growth enhancer (I may be wrong) but used because of the way livestock is maintained. When you have cows being kept standing in one place to maintain lean meat, they develop infections more so than being able to walk somewhere other than their own feces. So to keep production up and infections down, the livestock gets pumped full of antibiotics.

Huge amounts of ionophores [1] are used as feed additives. That class of drugs is not used therapeutically in humans. I think other antibiotics are also used quite extensively as feed additives, but I'm less clear on them. If you search on 'vancomycin feed additive', you see discussion about replacing it with other drugs.

There are health benefits to the animals (the drugs prevent 'bloat'), but they also increase the weight gain per pound of feed, which the farmer (rancher? lot manager?) is going to take into account.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionophore

BTW, you can already see a shift in the industry from calling out the antibiotic use as a growth enhancement, to calling it a preemptive use to prevent sickness. It just happens that when you collect animals together in high density feedlots to fatten them up - it does create increased illness rates - in addition to being a vector for breeding and spreading resistant bacteria.

So the label has changed, but the end effect of pouring tons of antibiotics into conditions that breed resistance is still there unless we change conditions in feedlots.

Different antibiotics.

Isn't it moot? The bugs have mutated already. Closing the barn door after the cows have left...

A valid concern. From what I've heard though most mutations that cause antibiotics resistance are selected against in the absence of antibiotics.

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