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Saturday, 01 June 2002

The alarm bells regarding the use of antibiotics in animal feed were sounded decades ago. I remember reading an article in New Scientist well over twenty years ago which suggested that the that long-term consumption of food produced in this way could result in eventual resistance to those antibiotics in humans.

And so it came to pass. This June’s issue of National Geographic carries a feature on food safety in which Alicia Anderson, epidemiologist at the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention, is quoted as saying “The promiscuous use of antibiotics as food supplements for farm animals is a serious threat to human health.” She goes on to say that ‘the use of drugs in healthy animals is playing a role in changing the very nature of foodborne bacteria, creating strains that are resistant to antibiotics used in human medicine.’ So-called superbugs have been appearing around the world and one report found that samples of meat from supermarkets in Washington contained salmonella bacteria of which 84% were antibiotic resistant.

Unlike the US, the European Union has now banned such use of most, but not all, of the antibiotics used to treat human illness. On organic farms however, antibiotics are never used on healthy animals. Organic dairy cattle may only be given antibiotics when they are ill and their milk is then withdrawn until they are well.