Antibiotics in Animal Feed Tied to Human Illness

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Antibiotics in Animal Feed Tied to Human Illness

The New York Times

WASHINGTON – Scientists from the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have come up with new evidence linking antibiotics in animals feed with illness in humans.

Antibiotics are fed to most livestock in the United States to feed off disease and promote growth. But in recent years, scientists have contended that strains of salmonella bacteria that are resistant to the drugs can flourish inside the animals as competing organisms are killed off. Then, this theory goes, the salmonella can cause severe intestinal ailments in people who eat contaminated meat, and treatment is difficult because the antibiotic ordinarily used in treatment are in effective.

According to a draft of the federal study, which is to be published in The New England Journal of Medicine on March 5, the findings demonstrated “conclusively” that salmonella was spread to humans in this way. “These studies show that feed animals are a major source of antimicrobial-resistant salmonella infections in humans,” the report said.

The study is expected to have significant impact in the debate over the use of antibiotics in animal feed because it will appear in one of the country’s leading medical journals and because it will put the weight of the government’s top epidemiologists behind the contention that the practice can be harmful to humans.

The report by a research team headed by Dr. John Spike has been awaited in Congress, where bills barring the routine feeding of antibiotics to animals are to be reintroduced, as well as at the Food and Drug Administration, which once tried to ban such use. It also is of interest to the food and chemical industries, for which the use of antibiotics has enormous economic significance.

The antibiotics permit animals to make more efficient use of their feed and protect livestock against the rapid spread of disease in the close quarters in which they are kept in modern animal raising.

An side to Sen. John Chafee (Republican R.I.) said the senator planned to introduce a bill in the next few days that would restrict sharply the feeding of antibiotic to animals Chafee introduced a similar measure last October, but it was not acted on by Congress.

In submitting his previous bill, called the Antibiotic Safety Act, Chafee cited an estimate by the Federal Office of Technology Assessment that feed-containing antibiotics was fed to 60 percent of all cattle, 90 percent of pigs, 90 percent of calves raised for veal and almost all poultry. Nearly half the antibiotics produced in the United States were used in livestock feed to promote growth rather than to treat disease. Chafee said, again citing the federal study.

Among the antibiotics most frequently used in animal feed are penicillin and tetracycline, which also are prescribed frequently in human illnesses. But these medicines are ineffective against diseases caused by resistant strains of bacteria that develop in animals fed with the drugs.

Chafee told the Senate in October that a report by the Natural Resources Defense Council, a non-governmental organization, predicted the routine animal use of the two antibiotics would account for more than 270,000 cases of salmonella causing 100 to 300 deaths.

The CDC study concluded that cooking, especially the light cooking of beef favored by many Americans does not kill all the salmonella organisms.

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