AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week, Mark writes: Lately I’ve been afflicted with the uncomfortable feeling that my fate is in the hands of other people. Last week it seemed almost all of those people were in Albany. Such is the scope of our state capitol’s sway over my life that I’ve become an avid reader of the Albany Times Union Capitol Confidential blog. While the Legislature was still in session, I was checking every couple of hours to see if they had made decisions that could determine where I will live in New York City (they extended and strengthened rent stabilization), how our domestic life might be organized (they authorized same sex marriage), how and at what price I will buy my health insurance (they left town without creating an effective State Health Care Exchange), and how I conduct my health-oriented legal practice (they made good changes in health insurance appeal rules). All of these issues affect my life but were totally out of my control. It is, therefore, a considerable comfort to have the farm. A big part of my life (Peter would say it's far too big a part) is what I eat. Producing the majority of my food supply gives me a modicum of feeling of control over that part, at least. Since the food available in stores and the food we grow on the farm looks very much the same, it is good to have the occasional reminder of why that control is so important. One reminder came in an email Peter received and passed on to me this week from a progressive on-line group, CREDO Action, asking us to actively support legislation banning routine use of antibiotics as an additive to animal feed.
Industrial agriculture generally uses antibiotics both as a prophylactic against disease and as a growth enhancer. The need to prevent disease is, in part, a function of how the animals are raised. If cattle are closely confined in feed lots, eating a diet of grain that their rumens were not designed to digest, and are standing in their own feces, or if poultry are raised cheek-by-jowl in indoor sheds breathing manure-laden dust, fast-spreading disease is a constant risk. The need to enhance growth is a response to the high cost of feed and overhead. Bringing the animals to market faster reduces costs, thus enhancing the corporate bottom line. Sure, the immature animals don't have the same flavor as slow grown older animals, but industry banks on consumers not being able to discern the difference in the quality of the meat. We often wonder if they are right. Widespread subclinical antibiotic use is not solely an industrial farming practice. Many small farms and hobby farms routinely buy commercial feed mixes that also contain antibiotics. For certain types of non-organic feed, it is hard to find "non-medicated" varieties. Non-medical antibiotic use, in fact, is widespread. For all we read about overuse of antibiotics in humans, in this country, it is the livestock that ingest 70% of all antibiotics sold.
So what’s the problem? Why not use the miracles of modern science to advance efficiency and augment food production? One reason is that widespread use of antibiotics, accelerates the pace at which these drugs come in contact with the microbes they are intended to attack, thus also accelerating the pace at which those microbes develop resistance to those medicines. The result is an increase in diseases and infections that are antibiotic resistant, such as MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a staph bacterium), which is now a major killer in the United States, and the antibiotic resistant strain of e-coli that killed many dozens of people in Germany just weeks ago. A second problem is an increasing body of evidence that antibiotic residues in the meats we eat have adverse human health effects. A short abstract I read in Veterinary World summarized the mechanisms by which antibiotics enhance growth in animals. It also detailed how the residues left in meat are toxic for humans, potentially causing harm to the liver, kidneys, and bone marrow, while raising the risk of cancer as well as reproductive and autoimmune disorders. What are we doing to ourselves? There is certainly a place for antibiotics. Under medical supervision, we use them for sick or wounded animals. But if livestock are raised in a healthy, uncrowded environment, the incidence of sickness is greatly reduced. We haven't needed to administer antibiotics to our poultry in years.
I can just imagine you thinking that this is all well and good but we can't all be farmers and control what the animals we eat are eating. While that's certainly true, a lot more of us can gain some control over our food supply by checking out small scale local farms, examining their practices, and patronizing those that eschew routine antibiotic use in their feed. That's a step toward the consumer seizing control. But we can't stop there. Even if we, as individuals, manage to avoid all the antibiotic contaminated food on earth, we live in a larger society, and what others do affects us: The antibiotic-resistant microbe that develops in a feed-lot steer can reproduce and spread, and its progeny will be no less antibiotic-resistant when they infect us, even if we eat nothing but grass-fed beef. CREDO is right. We need much broader controls on antibiotic use in animal feed. That, however, requires legislative action. And so, I will continue to read Capitol Confidential and wait. —Mark ScherzerFor the complete archive of past AgriCulture blogs, click here.
