Citing Drug Resistance, U.S. Restricts More Antibiotics for Livestock

By GARDINER HARRIS

Published: January 4, 2012

• RECOMMEND
• TWITTER
• LINKEDIN
• SIGN IN TO E-MAIL
• PRINT
• REPRINTS
• SHARE

WASHINGTON — Federal drug regulators announced on Wednesday that farmers and ranchers must restrict their use of a critical class of antibiotics in cattle, pigs, chickens and turkeys because such practices may have contributed to the growing threat in people of bacterial infections that are resistant to treatment.

Enlarge This Image

Veronica Lukasova for The New York Times

Cephalosporins commonly treat humans as well as animals like chickens.

The medicines are known as cephalosporins and include brands like Cefzil and Keflex. They are among the most common antibiotics prescribed to treat pneumonia, strep throat, and skin and urinary tract infections. Surgeons also often use them before surgery, and they are particularly popular among pediatricians.

The drugs’ use in agriculture has, according to many microbiologists, led to the development of bacteria that are resistant to their effects, a development that many doctors say has cost thousands of lives.

Antibiotics were the wonder drugs of the 20th century, and their initial uses in both humans and animals were indiscriminate. Farmers became so enamored of the miraculous effects of penicillin and tetracycline on the robustness of cattle, chickens and pigs that the drugs were added in bulk to feed and water, with no need forprescriptions or any sign of sickness in the animals.

By the 1970s, public health officials had become worried that overuse was leading to the birth of killer infections resistant to treatment. Since then, the Food and Drug Administration has undertaken fitful efforts to wean farmers, ranchers and veterinarians from excessive use of the medicines, but the vast majority of antibiotics used in the United States still go to treat animals, not humans. Meanwhile, outbreaks of illnesses from antibiotic-resistant bacteria have grown in number and severity.

A decade ago, the F.D.A. banned indiscriminate agricultural uses of a powerful class of antibiotics, called fluoroquinolones, that includes the medicine Cipro. Wednesday’s announcement was another of the F.D.A.’s incremental steps.

“We believe this is an imperative step in preserving the effectiveness of this class of important antimicrobials that takes into account the need to protect the health of both humans and animals,” said Michael R. Taylor, deputy commissioner for foods at the agency.

Cephalosporins are not used as widely in livestock as penicillin, since they require a prescription from veterinarians. But the drugs are routinely injected into broiler eggs and used in large doses to treat infections in cattle and other animals.

The new rule will restrict only some of these uses and is therefore a modest step that, while applauded by consumer advocates, led many to call for far tougher measures.

“This is particularly important because cephalosporins are so important to human health, but it’s only a first step,” said Laura Rogers of the Pew Charitable Trusts, which has advocated restricting agricultural uses of antibiotics.

The F.D.A. initially proposed cephalosporin restrictions in 2008 but withdrew the rule before it could take effect because of opposition from veterinarians, farmers and drug companies. The rule announced Wednesday is less strict than that one, since it still allows veterinarians to use the drugs in to treat sick animals in some ways the F.D.A. has not specifically approved, and wide discretion to treat small-scale-production animals like ducks and rabbits. The rule bans routine injections of cephalosporins into chicken eggs and large and lengthy dosing in cattle and swine.

Dr. Christine Hoang, assistant director of scientific activities at the American Veterinary Medical Association, said the new rule was a vast improvement over the one proposed in 2008.

“We thought the original order was too broad and unnecessarily prohibited uses that were not likely to cause problems for human health,” Dr. Hoang said.

Dr. Scott A. Brown of Pfizer, which makes cephalosporins used in animals, said the company “acknowledges the intent of the proposed order to respect veterinary discretion in determining the appropriate and responsible use of cephalosporin antibiotic medicines in the interest of animal health and human health.”

The F.D.A. has yet to make final a guideline proposed in 2010 that would edge the agency closer to banning uses of penicillin and tetracycline in feed and water for the sole purpose of promoting the growth of animals or preventing illness that results from unsanitary living conditions. This issue has generated intense controversy among farmers and ranchers who contend that public health officials have exaggerated the danger of agricultural uses of antibiotics to humans.

When asked about the penicillin guideline, Mr. Taylor of the F.D.A. said, “We’re hopeful that in the coming months, we’ll be able to carry forward on that work.”

Representative Louise M. Slaughter, a Democrat from New York and a microbiologist, said the F.D.A. had been too slow and too timid. “We are staring at a massive public health threat in the rise of antibiotic-resistant superbugs,” she said. “We need to start acting with the swiftness and decisiveness this problem deserves.”

But Dr. Gatz Riddell, executive vice president of the American Association of Bovine Practitioners, a veterinarian group, said the dangers of agricultural uses of antibiotics had been greatly exaggerated. “It is highly misunderstood in the human-health community how much antibiotics are used in animals who are not sick or at risk of becoming sick,” he said.

BARRY ESTABROOK - Barry Estabrook is a former contributing editor at Gourmet magazine. He is the author of the recently released Tomatoland, a book about industrial tomato agriculture. He blogs at politicsoftheplate.com. More

• ALL POSTS

SHARE

« Previous Health | Next Health »

EMAIL PRINT

Organic Can Feed the World

DEC 5 2011, 9:04 AM ET 141

Given that current production systems leave nearly one billion people undernourished, the onus should be on the agribusiness industry to prove its model, not the other way around

"We all have things that drive us crazy," wrote Steve Kopperud in a blog post this fall for Brownfield, an organization that disseminates agricultural news online and through radio broadcasts. Kopperud, who is a lobbyist for agribusiness interests in Washington, D.C., then got downright personal: "Firmly ensconced at the top of my list are people who consider themselves experts on an issue when judging by what they say and do, they're sitting high in an ivory tower somewhere contemplating only the 'wouldn't-it-be-nice' aspects."

At the top of that heap, Kopperud put Michael Pollan and Marion Nestle, a contributor to Atlantic Life and the author of Food Politics, the title of both her most well-known book and her daily blog.

"There's a huge chunk of reality missing from Dr. Nestle's academic approach to life," Kopperud wrote. "The missing bit is, quite simply, the answer to the following question: How do you feed seven billion people today and nine billion by 2040 through organic, natural, and local food production?" He then answers his own question. "You can't."

What is notably lacking in the "conventional" versus organic debate are studies backing up the claim that organic can't feed the world's growing population.

As a journalist who takes issues surrounding food production seriously, I too have things that drive me crazy.

At the top of my list are agribusiness advocates such as Kopperud (and, more recently, Steve Sexton ofFreakonomics) who dismiss well-thought-out concerns about today's dysfunctional food production system with the old saw that organic farming can't save the world. They persist in repeating this as an irrefutable fact, even as one scientific study after another concludes the exact opposite: not only that organic can indeed feed nine billion human beings but that it is the only hope we have of doing so.

"There isn't enough land to feed the nine billion people" is one tired argument that gets trotted out by the anti-organic crowd, including Kopperud. That assertion ignores a 2007 study led by Ivette Perfecto, of the University of Michigan, showing that in developing countries, where the chances of famine are greatest, organic methods could double or triple crop yields.

"My hope is that we can finally put a nail in the coffin of the idea that you can't produce enough food through organic agriculture," Perfecto told Science Daily at the time.

Too bad solid, scientific research hasn't been enough to drive that nail home. A 2010 United Nationsstudy (PDF) concluded that organic and other sustainable farming methods that come under the umbrella of what the study's authors called "agroecology" would be necessary to feed the future world. Two years earlier, a U.N. examination (PDF) of farming in 24 African countries found that organic or near-organic farming resulted in yield increases of more than 100 percent. Another U.N.-supported report entitled "Agriculture at a Crossroads" (PDF), compiled by 400 international experts, said that the way the world grows food will have to change radically to meet future demand. It called for governments to pay more attention to small-scale farmers and sustainable practices -- shooting down the bigger-is-inevitably-better notion that huge factory farms and their efficiencies of scale are necessary to feed the world.

Suspicious of the political motives of the U.N.? Well, there's a study that came out in 2010 from the all-American National Research Council. Written by professors from seven universities, including the University of California, Iowa State University, and the University of Maryland, the report finds that organic farming, grass-fed livestock husbandry, and the production of meat and crops on the same farm will be needed to sustain food production in this country.

The Pennsylvania-based Rodale Institute is an unequivocal supporter of all things organic. But that's no reason to dismiss its 2008 report "The Organic Green Revolution" (PDF), which provides a concise argument for why a return to organic principles is necessary to stave off world hunger, and which backs the assertion with citations of more than 50 scientific studies.

Rodale concludes that farming must move away from using unsustainable, increasingly unaffordable, petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides and turn to "organic, regenerative farming systems that sustain and improve the health of the world population, our soil, and our environment." The science the report so amply cites shows that such a system would

• give competitive yields to "conventional" methods
• improve soil and boost its capacity to hold water, particularly important during droughts
• save farmers money on pesticides and fertilizers
• save energy because organic production requires 20 to 50 percent less input
• mitigate global warming because cover crops and compost can sequester close to 40 percent of global CO2 emissions
• increase food nutrient density

What is notably lacking in the "conventional" versus organic debate are studies backing up the claim that organic can't feed the world's growing population. In an exhaustive review using Google and several academic search engines of all the scientific literature published between 1999 and 2007 addressing the question of whether or not organic agriculture could feed the world, the British Soil Association, which supports and certifies organic farms, found (PDF) that there had been 98 papers published in the previous eight years addressing the question of whether organic could feed the world. Every one of the papers showed that organic farming had that potential. Not one argued otherwise.

The most troubling part of Kopperud's post is where he says that he finds the food movement of which Pollan and Nestle are respected leaders "almost dangerous." He's wrong. The real danger is when an untruth is repeated so often that people accept it as fact.

Given that the current food production system, which is really a 75-year-old experiment, leaves nearly one billion of the world's seven billion humans seriously undernourished today, the onus should be on the advocates of agribusiness to prove their model can feed a future population of nine billion -- not the other way around.

Image: Marykit/Shutterstock.

from the Atlantic