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If you're worried about antibiotic resistance, consider cutting back or eliminating animal agriculture products from your diet. According to the FDA, 80% of an

If you're worried about antibiotic resistance, consider cutting back or eliminating animal agriculture products from your diet. According to the FDA, 80% of antibiotics used in the US are given to farm animals. This is because it is cheaper to give antibiotics to every farm animal just in case rather than giving the medical care needed to properly diagnose and treat. Bird flu or swine flu has a decent probability of being the next epidemic because of this practice. http://www.sustainabletable.org/257/antibiotics http://www.sustainabletable.org/257/antibiotics EDIT: My mistake, bird and swine flu are caused by viruses not bacteria and are therefore not affected by the antibiotic stuffing of farm animals. But the crowding and conditions of factory farms do contribute to potential bird and swine flu outbreaks. See my comment below.

lidlin 9y ago
> 80% of antibiotics used in the US are given to farm animals These antibiotics are not the same ones used to treat human infections, and the correlation between the rise in antibiotic resistant infections and antibiotic use in livestock does not indicate causation. > Bird flu or swine flu has a decent probability of being the next epidemic because of this practice. Influenza is caused by a virus, and is unaffected by antibiotics.
- DennisP 9y ago
  It's simply not the case that we use totally different antibiotics for agriculture. Here's an article in Scientific American about the health risks of agricultural antibiotics. One quote: "One study reported that more than 90 percent of E. coli in pigs raised on conventional farms are resistant to tetracycline." https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-drug-resistant-bacteria-travel-from-the-farm-to-your-table/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-drug-resistan... I guess it's possible that the rise of both antibiotic use in livestock and antibiotic resistance in their bacteria is completely coincidental, but given the well-understood causal connection it seems quite unlikely.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  But aren't influenza infections often associated with secondary bacterial infections, eg https://academic.oup.com/jac/article/64/5/889/716264/Swine-flu-and-antibiotics https://academic.oup.com/jac/article/64/5/889/716264/Swine-f..., where to treat the patient "with flu" prescription of antibiotics is a normal and beneficial course of action?
- ravitation 9y ago
  > These antibiotics are not the same ones used to treat human infections, and the correlation between the rise in antibiotic resistant infections and antibiotic use in livestock does not indicate causation. This is not true. There are multiple antibiotics that are used in both livestock and humans. It is only true that there are some antibiotics used in livestock and not in humans.
dalbasal 9y ago
Are bird flu & swine flu affected by antibiotics?
- lprubin 9y ago
  My mistake. Animals are stuffed with antibiotics but you're right that swine and bird flu are caused by viruses. This article explains why factory farming is dangerous with regards to bird flu: > The conditions on these farms greatly contribute to the creation of deadly pathogens, including influenza viruses. Here’s how it works: Wild aquatic birds are the primordial source of all influenza A viruses — the ones that have the potential to cause pandemics. However, people rarely become infected directly from aquatic birds. Usually, an intermediate host must be involved. This intermediate host provides the right biological setting for the virus to transform into something that can easily infect a human. And that’s where chickens and other farmed animals come in. Most avian influenzas are mild, low-pathogenic (i.e., not very lethal) viruses. However, once they enter poultry factory farms (through insects or workers carrying the virus, for example), they can rapidly mutate into highly-pathogenic (very lethal) viruses, even over very short periods of time. Since 1990, outbreaks of highly-pathogenic virus subtypes have increased substantially among farmed birds compared with the years prior to 1990 (3, 4). The intensive confinement of birds has been found to facilitate both the increasing frequency and scale of these outbreaks (3, 5). http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aysha-akhtar/bird-flu_b_2798136.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aysha-akhtar/bird-flu_b_279813...
  - 100ideas 9y ago
    "Mutation" in the sense of a single subtype stochastically accumulating mutations to its own genome is not what causes the emergence of most new pathogenic subtypes - its antigenic drift via genomic reassortment in co-infected hosts. New subtypes / serotypes that are highly pathogenic to humans usually develop when multiple different subtypes co-infect and replicate in the same cell of an infected host. This can lead to "reassortment" of the genes in pool of replicating viral genomes. Most of the time when this happens the resulting hybrid genomes are probably too screwed up to be viable, but sometimes it leads to new genomic assortments that are viable and remix the pathogenic genes of one donor subtype with the surface coat proteins of a different subtype, resulting in a new subtype that is both pathogenic and antigenically novel to the host species. This is why we need to constantly make new influenza vaccines as fast as possible. This page explains it better than I did: "Influenza A viruses have eight separate gene segments. The segmented genome allows influenza A viruses from different species to mix and create a new virus if influenza A viruses from two different species infect the same person or animal. For example, if a pig were infected with a human influenza A virus and an avian influenza A virus at the same time, the new replicating viruses could mix existing genetic information (reassortment) and produce a new influenza A virus that had most of the genes from the human virus, but a hemagglutinin gene and/or neuraminidase gene and other genes from the avian virus. The resulting new virus might then be able to infect humans and spread easily from person to person, but it would have surface proteins (hemagglutinin and/or neuraminidase) different than those currently found in influenza viruses that infect humans. This type of major change in the influenza A viruses is known as “antigenic shift.” Antigenic shift results when a new influenza A virus subtype to which most people have little or no immune protection infects humans. If this new influenza A virus causes illness in people and is transmitted easily from person to person in a sustained manner, an influenza pandemic can occur." - https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/virus-transmission.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/virus-transmission.htm
newscracker 9y ago
It's not only cheaper to feed animals antibiotics, but it also makes the animals put on more weight quicker, which is monetarily beneficial for the farmers/companies in the industry. From whatever I have read (over time), this is a routine practice in most places around the world. Unless serious action is taken around the world to reduce or eliminate this practice, the disturbing predictions on untreatable epidemics may come true within the next couple of decades (there are already thousands of people dying every year because their infections cannot be treated with the antibiotic arsenal we have).
refurb 9y ago
Most of the antibiotics used on animals are different than the ones used in humans.
- lprubin 9y ago
  While what you are saying is true, one of the antibiotics that is used in farm animals is penicillin. Also, consider the following: > In 2010, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the CDC all testified before Congress that there is a connection between the routine use of antibiotics for meat production and the declining effectiveness of antibiotics for people. Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, Director of the CDC, noted that “there is strong scientific evidence of a link between antibiotic use in food animals and antibiotic resistance in humans.” http://www.livablefutureblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/ar-m455n_20101129_182057.pdf http://www.livablefutureblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/...
- ravitation 9y ago
  Most, but not all.
pfarnsworth 9y ago
In California, antibiotics are illegal for general use in poultry and livestock as of a couple of years ago.
CamperBob2 9y ago
Have the antibiotics used in animals (or any other antibiotics for that matter) been demonstrated to remain effective after cooking? My guess is not, but if you have evidence to the contrary I'd like to hear about it.
- Fomite 9y ago
  The concern is not the antibiotic, it's the bacteria made resistant to that antibiotic that doesn't get killed after cooking inadequately.
  - CamperBob2 9y ago
    Sorry, I'm just not seeing the connection here. How much overlap is there between the set of zoonotic diseases (those transmitted from animals to humans), and diseases where antibiotic resistance is a concern?
    - Fomite 9y ago
      A tremendous amount. Just to name a few potentially found in food: E. coli, Salmonella, C. difficile (though resistance in C. difficile is...funny), Listeria, Shigella and Staphylococcus all come to mind off the top of my head. CDC even has a nice little infographic on it. https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/challenges/from-farm-to-table.html https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/challenges/from-farm-to-table...
Fomite 9y ago
I study antimicrobial resistance for a living, and I will note that the "Animal Antibiotics" ---> "Resistance Relevant to Human Health" pathway is not nearly that clear cut. However, one of the big things that is changing antibiotic use in agriculture is market forces.

lidlin 9y ago

> 80% of antibiotics used in the US are given to farm animals These antibiotics are not the same ones used to treat human infections, and the correlation between the rise in antibiotic resistant infections and antibiotic use in livestock does not indicate causation. > Bird flu or swine flu has a decent probability of being the next epidemic because of this practice. Influenza is caused by a virus, and is unaffected by antibiotics.

DennisP 9y ago
It's simply not the case that we use totally different antibiotics for agriculture. Here's an article in Scientific American about the health risks of agricultural antibiotics. One quote: "One study reported that more than 90 percent of E. coli in pigs raised on conventional farms are resistant to tetracycline." https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-drug-resistant-bacteria-travel-from-the-farm-to-your-table/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-drug-resistan... I guess it's possible that the rise of both antibiotic use in livestock and antibiotic resistance in their bacteria is completely coincidental, but given the well-understood causal connection it seems quite unlikely.
pbhjpbhj 9y ago
But aren't influenza infections often associated with secondary bacterial infections, eg https://academic.oup.com/jac/article/64/5/889/716264/Swine-flu-and-antibiotics https://academic.oup.com/jac/article/64/5/889/716264/Swine-f..., where to treat the patient "with flu" prescription of antibiotics is a normal and beneficial course of action?
ravitation 9y ago
> These antibiotics are not the same ones used to treat human infections, and the correlation between the rise in antibiotic resistant infections and antibiotic use in livestock does not indicate causation. This is not true. There are multiple antibiotics that are used in both livestock and humans. It is only true that there are some antibiotics used in livestock and not in humans.

dalbasal 9y ago

Are bird flu & swine flu affected by antibiotics?

lprubin 9y ago
My mistake. Animals are stuffed with antibiotics but you're right that swine and bird flu are caused by viruses. This article explains why factory farming is dangerous with regards to bird flu: > The conditions on these farms greatly contribute to the creation of deadly pathogens, including influenza viruses. Here’s how it works: Wild aquatic birds are the primordial source of all influenza A viruses — the ones that have the potential to cause pandemics. However, people rarely become infected directly from aquatic birds. Usually, an intermediate host must be involved. This intermediate host provides the right biological setting for the virus to transform into something that can easily infect a human. And that’s where chickens and other farmed animals come in. Most avian influenzas are mild, low-pathogenic (i.e., not very lethal) viruses. However, once they enter poultry factory farms (through insects or workers carrying the virus, for example), they can rapidly mutate into highly-pathogenic (very lethal) viruses, even over very short periods of time. Since 1990, outbreaks of highly-pathogenic virus subtypes have increased substantially among farmed birds compared with the years prior to 1990 (3, 4). The intensive confinement of birds has been found to facilitate both the increasing frequency and scale of these outbreaks (3, 5). http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aysha-akhtar/bird-flu_b_2798136.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aysha-akhtar/bird-flu_b_279813...
- 100ideas 9y ago
  "Mutation" in the sense of a single subtype stochastically accumulating mutations to its own genome is not what causes the emergence of most new pathogenic subtypes - its antigenic drift via genomic reassortment in co-infected hosts. New subtypes / serotypes that are highly pathogenic to humans usually develop when multiple different subtypes co-infect and replicate in the same cell of an infected host. This can lead to "reassortment" of the genes in pool of replicating viral genomes. Most of the time when this happens the resulting hybrid genomes are probably too screwed up to be viable, but sometimes it leads to new genomic assortments that are viable and remix the pathogenic genes of one donor subtype with the surface coat proteins of a different subtype, resulting in a new subtype that is both pathogenic and antigenically novel to the host species. This is why we need to constantly make new influenza vaccines as fast as possible. This page explains it better than I did: "Influenza A viruses have eight separate gene segments. The segmented genome allows influenza A viruses from different species to mix and create a new virus if influenza A viruses from two different species infect the same person or animal. For example, if a pig were infected with a human influenza A virus and an avian influenza A virus at the same time, the new replicating viruses could mix existing genetic information (reassortment) and produce a new influenza A virus that had most of the genes from the human virus, but a hemagglutinin gene and/or neuraminidase gene and other genes from the avian virus. The resulting new virus might then be able to infect humans and spread easily from person to person, but it would have surface proteins (hemagglutinin and/or neuraminidase) different than those currently found in influenza viruses that infect humans. This type of major change in the influenza A viruses is known as “antigenic shift.” Antigenic shift results when a new influenza A virus subtype to which most people have little or no immune protection infects humans. If this new influenza A virus causes illness in people and is transmitted easily from person to person in a sustained manner, an influenza pandemic can occur." - https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/virus-transmission.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/virus-transmission.htm

newscracker 9y ago

It's not only cheaper to feed animals antibiotics, but it also makes the animals put on more weight quicker, which is monetarily beneficial for the farmers/companies in the industry. From whatever I have read (over time), this is a routine practice in most places around the world. Unless serious action is taken around the world to reduce or eliminate this practice, the disturbing predictions on untreatable epidemics may come true within the next couple of decades (there are already thousands of people dying every year because their infections cannot be treated with the antibiotic arsenal we have).

refurb 9y ago

Most of the antibiotics used on animals are different than the ones used in humans.

lprubin 9y ago
While what you are saying is true, one of the antibiotics that is used in farm animals is penicillin. Also, consider the following: > In 2010, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the CDC all testified before Congress that there is a connection between the routine use of antibiotics for meat production and the declining effectiveness of antibiotics for people. Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, Director of the CDC, noted that “there is strong scientific evidence of a link between antibiotic use in food animals and antibiotic resistance in humans.” http://www.livablefutureblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/ar-m455n_20101129_182057.pdf http://www.livablefutureblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/...
ravitation 9y ago
Most, but not all.

pfarnsworth 9y ago

In California, antibiotics are illegal for general use in poultry and livestock as of a couple of years ago.

CamperBob2 9y ago

Have the antibiotics used in animals (or any other antibiotics for that matter) been demonstrated to remain effective after cooking? My guess is not, but if you have evidence to the contrary I'd like to hear about it.

Fomite 9y ago
The concern is not the antibiotic, it's the bacteria made resistant to that antibiotic that doesn't get killed after cooking inadequately.
- CamperBob2 9y ago
  Sorry, I'm just not seeing the connection here. How much overlap is there between the set of zoonotic diseases (those transmitted from animals to humans), and diseases where antibiotic resistance is a concern?
  - Fomite 9y ago
    A tremendous amount. Just to name a few potentially found in food: E. coli, Salmonella, C. difficile (though resistance in C. difficile is...funny), Listeria, Shigella and Staphylococcus all come to mind off the top of my head. CDC even has a nice little infographic on it. https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/challenges/from-farm-to-table.html https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/challenges/from-farm-to-table...

Fomite 9y ago

I study antimicrobial resistance for a living, and I will note that the "Animal Antibiotics" ---> "Resistance Relevant to Human Health" pathway is not nearly that clear cut. However, one of the big things that is changing antibiotic use in agriculture is market forces.