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Use of antibiotics in farming ‘endangering human immune system’

396 points by mdp2021 4y ago

bell-cot 4y ago
Um, yes - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons I'd bet that was an all-too-familiar human behavior pattern back when Rome was a one-horse town. (Edit: Fixed "how the heck?" typo'ed TLD)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- greenie_beans 4y ago
  the tragedy of the commons is a myth. https://aeon.co/essays/the-tragedy-of-the-commons-is-a-false-and-dangerous-myth https://aeon.co/essays/the-tragedy-of-the-commons-is-a-false...
noud 4y ago
The good news is that it's reversible. When you stop feeding antibiotics to animals, the amount of resistance bacteria in the gut seems to reduce as well. Additionally, good management practices (clean pens, good hygiene, low stress) and proper feed could make the use of antibiotics in animals (almost) obsolete.
- dtech 4y ago
  The latter is not really the case. There seems to be something that causes animals being fed antibiotics to gain weight faster than without, all other circumstances being equal. This might have something to do with gut flora.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    While it's true they experience more weight gain, that's more of an off-label use. That doesn't negate the claim that proper procedures/care/environment could make the use of animal antibiotics more rare. There are other alternatives to increasing weight gain, although the use of any medication to induce weight gain should require careful consideration.
    - Jgrubb 4y ago
      The off label use of "makes animals gain weight faster" is why the entire industrial animal meat industry has been feeding antibiotics to cows for over a generation now. It's why "antibiotic free" is a marketing label now, because the opposite was the previous default. The antibiotic properties of antibiotics are basically a side effect.
      - giantg2 4y ago
        Eh, sort of. It's still mostly secondary. If you aren't feeding cattle antibiotic in a CAFO where they're crowded, eating spent brewers grain (mostly from fuel production), and living in filth, then they will get sick and die. Same thing for most chicken houses until changes were made a few years ago. The 10% or so of production that takes place on small farms generally didn't use antibiotics as a standard ration because they didn't need to, even if it would have slightly improved weight gain. Even the industry is try to voluntarily eliminate it in pork because they want access to international markets.
        biorach 4y ago
        > If you aren't feeding cattle antibiotic in a CAFO where they're crowded, eating spent brewers grain (mostly from fuel production), and living in filth, then they will get sick and die Much citation needed. I don't know exactly what you mean by CAFO when it comes to cattle, but the EU banned routine administration of antibiotics with no noticable effect on the practice of permanently housing cows or beef cattle
        4y ago
  - User23 4y ago
    Even supposing that’s true, perhaps the same effect can be achieved without antibiotics? For example maybe some kind of probiotic feed that displaces the undesirable gut flora?
- pella 4y ago
  > The good news is that it's reversible. While bacteria evolution can't be reversed, stopping antibiotics in animals can help lower the number of resistant bacteria. Good care practices can reduce the need for antibiotics.
  - goda90 4y ago
    It actually can. Bacteria reproduce and die off rapidly. That means the rates of mutation are high. If there's no selective pressure from the antibiotics, then there's nothing reinforcing that resistance and it can mutate away in a few generations. This has actually been tested in laboratory settings: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6707769/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6707769/
  - nick__m 4y ago
    While bacteria evolution can't be reversed, the antibiotic resistance usually have a cost to maintain (the fitness cost¹) and without the evolutive pressure cause by the antibiotic, bacteria without those costly genes will eventually dominate. 1) https://www.nature.com/articles/nrmicro2319 https://www.nature.com/articles/nrmicro2319
goaheaddownvote 4y ago
People are kinda stupid when it comes to eating meat. The current scale of meat consumption [1] is just mind boggling. Yet even this comment has to be a throwaway because people can't handle someone telling them they shouldn't eat meat 2x a day. It's bad for the environment, it's bad for individual health, it's bad for collective health (breeding drug resistance and causing pandemics), and all that is before we even talk about the mass scale of needless suffering inflicted on other sentient beings. I don't know what the solution is, because as soon as you mention eating less meat people laugh at you or get super defensive. "What, do you care about the animals?" is something I've had people say to me in all seriousness. When I gave it up it felt similar to giving up cigarettes, you get depressed and feel exiled from a joy you used to share with others. But that's what addiction does to you and once you get to the other side you wonder how you even participated in such negative behavior in the first place. My fantasy solution is everyone needs to go get a meat consumption license by going to a farm and killing an animal with a knife in their hands every, say, 10 years. If you can't do it, then you have no business participating in consuming it. Bonus points if you're a regular hunter. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/animals-slaughtered-for-meat https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/animals-slaughtered-for-m...
- typicalrunt 4y ago
  > People are kinda stupid when it comes to eating meat. The current scale of meat consumption [1] is just mind boggling. Yet even this comment has to be a throwaway because people can't handle someone telling them they shouldn't eat meat 2x a day. I'm sensing a lack of empathy in this comment. Calling people stupid or attaching any label to them will only hinder your attempt to sway their minds. Portraying black and white thinking (splitting), when we know the world is shades of grey, also hinders your ability to change minds. It's great that you found benefits to moving to a non-meat diet. This helps others see what they could benefit from. Continue from here.
  - bogle 4y ago
    I don't think the OP was trying to sway minds when they described meat consumption as stupid, they were simply stating the obvious.
deleted 4y ago
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myshpa 4y ago
Animal agriculture has too many shortcomings. - Greenhouse gas emissions - Deforestation - Land degradation - Water pollution - Water overconsumption - Loss of biodiversity - Antibiotic resistance - Ocean dead zones - Inefficient land and resource use - Ethical concerns regarding animal welfare - Contribution to zoonotic diseases - Air pollution - Eutrophication - Soil erosion - High energy consumption - Chemical runoff from pesticides and fertilizers - Destruction of habitats and ecosystems - Overfishing and bycatch - Inequality in global food distribution - Public health risks from foodborne illnesses - Nutrient pollution - Strain on waste management systems etc.
- korroziya 4y ago
  [dead]
- mdp2021 4y ago
  Those shortcomings are more relevant to intensive, wrong, unregulated and mindless practice. There is a form of farming which keeps those shortcomings contained - with different costs (but also with different quality).
  - sharkjacobs 4y ago
    > Yes, but animal agriculture can be less harmful if you do less of it
    - mdp2021 4y ago
      I beg your pardon? It is not just a matter of "raising less animals", it is also (and mainly) a matter of raising them sensibly.
      - giraffe_lady 4y ago
        It is mostly a matter of raising less animals. No other factor or approach or combination of them can address these things alone, reduction is a necessary step. Defining any of this as "sensible" is an error imo. In a sense it's certainly sensible to have the goal of providing accessibly-priced meat to every member of a large country. Each step along the way is sensible, I'm sure. But then we end up here and there is nothing sensible about it. The sheer scale required to provide all that flesh is nearly profane in its own right. There is simply and frankly no way to do it responsibly at the scale we've chosen to do it. It seems meat will either remain built on human, animal and ecological exploitation at an incomprehensible scale, or it will revert to a rare and expensive luxury mostly available only to an economic elite. I haven't seen a compelling vision of any alternative.
Elgasso 4y ago
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hospitalJail 4y ago
I went vegetarian and things were going great. I was checking my micro and macro nutrients, things were perfect. I got a new job and I had to take a drug test. My creatine levels were too low and I failed/had to repeat the drug test. I ended up having to pee first thing in the morning to make my creatine levels higher. This was the most painful thing I've experienced in my life for about 3 hours as I waited for the place to open. That sucked. Later, my kid had low iron levels. I imagine I probably did too. Sure people are able to live a life without meat, but the nutrition from having meat is something I'm finding difficult to replace. We eat meat probably 2 or 3 times per week. Seems like a decent compromise, but I still feel like this is going to age poorly when people become more aware of animal consciousness.
- teaearlgraycold 4y ago
  I just take creatine and iron supplements. Really anyone that exercises should supplement creatine. I also eat meat occasionally, maybe once per week?
- mr337 4y ago
  2-3 times a week is exactly what is recommended [1]. There are several heath issues with high red meat intake, the biggest and not so fun is Colon Cancer. I know two people that lost the battle with colcon cancer. It is a bugger to diagnose, treat, and recurrence. 1 - https://www.aicr.org/cancer-prevention/recommendations/limit-consumption-of-red-and-processed-meat/ https://www.aicr.org/cancer-prevention/recommendations/limit...
- LesZedCB 4y ago
  I've been a highly athletic veg/vegan for a decade and not had any major issues, sans maybe B12 or vitamin d occasionally. plenty of veg friends experienced the same. vitamin supplements are easy to take.
- PretzelPirate 4y ago
  I'd love to know what you were eating. I've been vegan for over 13 years and I eat a lot of processed foods. My most recent blood test showed everything in the middle of the healthy range, and I had too much iron. I wonder if it's genetic, but my parents don't go to the doctor so I don't know anything about their health. I don't supplement, but eat the vegan equivalent of the standard American diet.
stametseater 4y ago
Look up "antimicrobial resistance" (AMR) and see where the deaths attributed to this are occurring. South Asia (e.g. India, etc) and Africa. Regions with inadequate healthcare for humans, where front-line antibiotics get spammed, where people don't complete the full course of treatment for lack of resources or understanding. It's not coming from the 'factory farms' of developed nations.
jes5199 4y ago
the RethinkX paper says that most farmed meat will be replaced by cheaper precision fermentation proteins by 2030 https://www.rethinkx.com/food-and-agriculture https://www.rethinkx.com/food-and-agriculture
- MichaelNolan 4y ago
  I love the optimism, and the ideas in all of the rethinkX papers. They are great reads. Their predictions for food and agriculture might indeed happen, but not by 2030. The dairy predictions in that paper seem the most likely to occur. Their paper on energy is also a fun read.
abeppu 4y ago
The discussion here seems to have ignored what seems like the interesting/new part of this. There has been plenty of prior research and media around blanket use of antibiotics creating _drug resistant_ bacteria which are harder to fight with drugs. But this is saying that additionally because some antibiotics are similar to chemicals endogenously produced within our own bodies, they also produce bacteria which our bodies are less effective at fighting on their own. I.e. this isn't just about the use of antibiotics -- this is about the use of antibiotics which are _similar to parts of our own immune systems_. Using antibiotics which are more dissimilar to our own immune responses would create _drug resistant_ bacteria but not _immune resistant_ bacteria.
- ciconia 4y ago
  This isn't just about antibiotics, it's also about monoculture. Both of those combined lead to a never ending arms race.
  - GLGirty 4y ago
    > a never ending arms race Did you mean, "the great filter?"
  - abeppu 4y ago
    > In the study, E coli carrying a resistance gene, called MCR-1, were exposed to AMPs known to play important roles in innate immunity in chickens, pigs, and humans. If the same kinds of AMPs appear across mammals and birds, breaking the monoculture (by e.g. raising animals of different breeds and species etc) but still using this class of antibiotics would still seem likely to cause the immune resistance problem. I'm not advocating for the monoculture-based practices, but I don't see how it's related to this specific mechanism.
    - darkerside 4y ago
      I think the connection to monoculture is that specific pathogens could decimate homogenous populations (see Irish potato famine), making widespread antibiotic use necessary in a much more preventative way
scythe 4y ago
Far be it from me to defend something as generally odious as the use of antibiotics in agriculture, but this article refers to one specific class of antibiotics, described as "antimicrobial peptides" but more precisely polymyxins, and particularly to colistin. You may be familiar with colistin as an "antibiotic of last resort" which is heavily restricted even in medicine. But check the list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_use_in_livestock http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_use_in_livestock You will notice that all but two are not peptides. "Peptides" are themselves a broad class of chemical, not implying a mechanism of action — contrast beta-lactams which damage cell walls — and bacitracin (which is distinct) has been used in poultry in the United States for fifty years without creating any immune-bypassing microorganisms. It should be distinguished from the polymyxins, the colistin family, which share a mechanism of action and are particularly important in the treatment of infections which have become resistant to other antibiotics. I was unable to find any evidence of polymyxins being used in agriculture in the United States or the West more broadly. http://www.msdvetmanual.com/pharmacology/antibacterial_agents/polymyxins_use_in_animals http://www.msdvetmanual.com/pharmacology/antibacterial_agent... >Polymyxin is not labeled for oral or parental use for any veterinary species in the US. That is not to justify the use of antibiotics in agriculture, which threatens millions of lives by endangering one of the most valuable medical technologies in human history, but it is not helpful to make claims which are not supported by the evidence. The use of colistin — or any polymyxins — in pigs in China is egregious (and has been belatedly banned by Chinese authorities in 2016). Linking this to meat consumption in the United States, where polymyxins are not used in agriculture, is suspect.
jelliclesfarm 4y ago
Never have humans in the history of their entire existence consumed so much meat in their daily diet. To imagine that this comes with no consequences is just naive.
- kahrl 4y ago
  "Never have humans in the history of their entire existence consumed so much meat in their daily diet." Source: jelliclesfarm's mind. Inuits would like a word with you.
  - jelliclesfarm 4y ago
    Right. So they hunted seasonally. They consume fish and also bird eggs. Most importantly, they didn’t eat factory farm meats. It seems to me that you are purposely omitting the context for a ‘gotcha’. [..]Hunted meats: Sea mammals such as walrus, seal, and whale. Whale meat generally comes from the narwhal, beluga whale and the bowhead whale. The latter is able to feed an entire community for nearly a year from its meat, blubber, and skin. Inuit hunters most often hunt juvenile whales which, compared to adults, are safer to hunt and have tastier skin. Ringed seal and bearded seal are the most important aspect of an Inuit diet and is often the largest part of an Inuit hunter's diet. Land mammals such as reindeer (caribou), polar bear, and muskox Birds and their eggs Saltwater and freshwater fish including sculpin, Arctic cod, Arctic char, capelin and lake trout. While it is not possible to cultivate native plants for food in the Arctic, Inuit have traditionally gathered those that are naturally available, including: Berries including crowberry and cloudberry Herbaceous plants such as grasses and fireweed Tubers and stems including mousefood, roots of various tundra plants which are cached by voles in burrows. Roots such as tuberous spring beauty and sweet vetch Seaweed[..] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit_cuisine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit_cuisine
    - kahrl 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - 4y ago
decafninja 4y ago
Tangent, but my wife's side of the family is Korean, whereas myself and my side of the family is Korean American. I was surprised at how liberally antibiotics are given out in the Korean medical system, even for health issues that shouldn't be bacterial. Many members of her family routinely pop antibiotic pills to treat the common cold or flu. They don't take a "full course" either - just a pill a day for a few days until they feel better. When they got Covid, they were again popping antibiotic pills to "treat" it. They swear it works, and this behavior is apparently commonplace there. I have very positive views on the Korean medical system, and think it generally beats the American one in almost every aspect. But this attitude towards antibiotics was shocking. My wife doesn't partake in this mainly because antibiotics are extremely rough on her stomach. I don't think they're having problems with antibiotic resistance there either, so what gives?
- Auracle 4y ago
  We live in an interconnected world so I don't think there would be any localized antibiotic resistance - the effect of that will diffuse across the planet quickly. That said, I wonder what their IBS rates are like. That can't be great for their gut biome.
  - davidjones332 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - tcoff91 4y ago
      My gut is only healthy when I'm mostly eating plants, it's crazy to make a blanket statement that eating plants is bad for your gut. How are you supposed to get fiber without plants?
      - ted_bunny 4y ago
        If it sounds so ridiculous, maybe consider that you're putting words in their mouth.
      - 4y ago
samanator 4y ago
> ...the prevalence of these strains of E coli have dropped steeply since China banned the use of colistin as a growth promoter, suggesting that these genes carry other “fitness disadvantages” for the pathogens. That sentence seems pretty important but is hardly given any attention. It seems like if we simply stop using the antibiotics then the dangerous strains will die out on their own?
- etiam 4y ago
  No. The numbers expressing it drop, but there are often enough advantages in competition situations that the trait stays around and can rapidly recolonize the population. Carrying the genetic material is a slight cost. Expressing it costs more, but that could be made conditional. Furthermore, note that in this case, the point is that the trait also confers resistance to the same type of molecule occurring naturally as part of the innate immune system of animals, meaning that for bacterial species with a large pathogenic component to their lifestyle the resistance retains a fitness advantage in their niche.
stainablesteel 4y ago
this is just another anti-farm hitpiece i don't care for this perspective, I'd rather have locally grown food over outsourcing it to some geopolitical rival with animal cruelty problems
BetterAdmin 4y ago
[flagged]
amriksohata 4y ago
What infuriates me is the big companies selling them to farmers, probably already know this and have done for years. But they continue to get away with it.
- CatWChainsaw 4y ago
  Kind of like that Shell report. Money now is more important than any future consequences.
  - amriksohata 4y ago
    and they can use that money later on to influence the media and court cases against them or pay them off
creato 4y ago
I’ve been hearing about this issue in some form for what seems like the last several decades. It seems like there have been some impacts, regulations followed, and then things turn out okay. I’m not aware of any significant human health impact from agricultural antibiotic resistance (unlike human antibiotics). Is there a reason to get so invested in this issue beyond making sure regulators stay on top of it the way they have been?
symlinkk 4y ago
Organic food doesn’t use antibiotics right? Seems like another reason to go organic if you can spare the $
heavyset_go 4y ago
80% of antibiotics in the US are used in animal husbandry, often because antibiotics cause animals to grow bigger. Until very recently, farmers could buy 55-gallon drums of antibiotics from Alibaba.com. Those antibiotics persist in the environment, where their exposure to scores of different species of bacteria causes resistance to develop across gene pools, which is bad because of horizontal gene transfer. The majority of communicable diseases in humans have zoonotic origins. It's insane that still wasn't enough, and the industry is now using antibacterial peptides that mirror innate immune systems.

396 points by mdp2021 4y ago

Um, yes - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons I'd bet that was an all-too-familiar human behavior pattern back when Rome was a one-horse town. (Edit: Fixed "how the heck?" typo'ed TLD)

deleted 4y ago
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greenie_beans 4y ago
the tragedy of the commons is a myth. https://aeon.co/essays/the-tragedy-of-the-commons-is-a-false-and-dangerous-myth https://aeon.co/essays/the-tragedy-of-the-commons-is-a-false...

noud 4y ago

The good news is that it's reversible. When you stop feeding antibiotics to animals, the amount of resistance bacteria in the gut seems to reduce as well. Additionally, good management practices (clean pens, good hygiene, low stress) and proper feed could make the use of antibiotics in animals (almost) obsolete.

dtech 4y ago
The latter is not really the case. There seems to be something that causes animals being fed antibiotics to gain weight faster than without, all other circumstances being equal. This might have something to do with gut flora.
- giantg2 4y ago
  While it's true they experience more weight gain, that's more of an off-label use. That doesn't negate the claim that proper procedures/care/environment could make the use of animal antibiotics more rare. There are other alternatives to increasing weight gain, although the use of any medication to induce weight gain should require careful consideration.
  - Jgrubb 4y ago
    The off label use of "makes animals gain weight faster" is why the entire industrial animal meat industry has been feeding antibiotics to cows for over a generation now. It's why "antibiotic free" is a marketing label now, because the opposite was the previous default. The antibiotic properties of antibiotics are basically a side effect.
    - giantg2 4y ago
      Eh, sort of. It's still mostly secondary. If you aren't feeding cattle antibiotic in a CAFO where they're crowded, eating spent brewers grain (mostly from fuel production), and living in filth, then they will get sick and die. Same thing for most chicken houses until changes were made a few years ago. The 10% or so of production that takes place on small farms generally didn't use antibiotics as a standard ration because they didn't need to, even if it would have slightly improved weight gain. Even the industry is try to voluntarily eliminate it in pork because they want access to international markets.
      - biorach 4y ago
        > If you aren't feeding cattle antibiotic in a CAFO where they're crowded, eating spent brewers grain (mostly from fuel production), and living in filth, then they will get sick and die Much citation needed. I don't know exactly what you mean by CAFO when it comes to cattle, but the EU banned routine administration of antibiotics with no noticable effect on the practice of permanently housing cows or beef cattle
        4y ago
- User23 4y ago
  Even supposing that’s true, perhaps the same effect can be achieved without antibiotics? For example maybe some kind of probiotic feed that displaces the undesirable gut flora?
pella 4y ago
> The good news is that it's reversible. While bacteria evolution can't be reversed, stopping antibiotics in animals can help lower the number of resistant bacteria. Good care practices can reduce the need for antibiotics.
- goda90 4y ago
  It actually can. Bacteria reproduce and die off rapidly. That means the rates of mutation are high. If there's no selective pressure from the antibiotics, then there's nothing reinforcing that resistance and it can mutate away in a few generations. This has actually been tested in laboratory settings: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6707769/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6707769/
- nick__m 4y ago
  While bacteria evolution can't be reversed, the antibiotic resistance usually have a cost to maintain (the fitness cost¹) and without the evolutive pressure cause by the antibiotic, bacteria without those costly genes will eventually dominate. 1) https://www.nature.com/articles/nrmicro2319 https://www.nature.com/articles/nrmicro2319

goaheaddownvote 4y ago

People are kinda stupid when it comes to eating meat. The current scale of meat consumption [1] is just mind boggling. Yet even this comment has to be a throwaway because people can't handle someone telling them they shouldn't eat meat 2x a day. It's bad for the environment, it's bad for individual health, it's bad for collective health (breeding drug resistance and causing pandemics), and all that is before we even talk about the mass scale of needless suffering inflicted on other sentient beings. I don't know what the solution is, because as soon as you mention eating less meat people laugh at you or get super defensive. "What, do you care about the animals?" is something I've had people say to me in all seriousness. When I gave it up it felt similar to giving up cigarettes, you get depressed and feel exiled from a joy you used to share with others. But that's what addiction does to you and once you get to the other side you wonder how you even participated in such negative behavior in the first place. My fantasy solution is everyone needs to go get a meat consumption license by going to a farm and killing an animal with a knife in their hands every, say, 10 years. If you can't do it, then you have no business participating in consuming it. Bonus points if you're a regular hunter. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/animals-slaughtered-for-meat https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/animals-slaughtered-for-m...

typicalrunt 4y ago
> People are kinda stupid when it comes to eating meat. The current scale of meat consumption [1] is just mind boggling. Yet even this comment has to be a throwaway because people can't handle someone telling them they shouldn't eat meat 2x a day. I'm sensing a lack of empathy in this comment. Calling people stupid or attaching any label to them will only hinder your attempt to sway their minds. Portraying black and white thinking (splitting), when we know the world is shades of grey, also hinders your ability to change minds. It's great that you found benefits to moving to a non-meat diet. This helps others see what they could benefit from. Continue from here.
- bogle 4y ago
  I don't think the OP was trying to sway minds when they described meat consumption as stupid, they were simply stating the obvious.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

myshpa 4y ago

Animal agriculture has too many shortcomings. - Greenhouse gas emissions - Deforestation - Land degradation - Water pollution - Water overconsumption - Loss of biodiversity - Antibiotic resistance - Ocean dead zones - Inefficient land and resource use - Ethical concerns regarding animal welfare - Contribution to zoonotic diseases - Air pollution - Eutrophication - Soil erosion - High energy consumption - Chemical runoff from pesticides and fertilizers - Destruction of habitats and ecosystems - Overfishing and bycatch - Inequality in global food distribution - Public health risks from foodborne illnesses - Nutrient pollution - Strain on waste management systems etc.

korroziya 4y ago
[dead]
mdp2021 4y ago
Those shortcomings are more relevant to intensive, wrong, unregulated and mindless practice. There is a form of farming which keeps those shortcomings contained - with different costs (but also with different quality).
- sharkjacobs 4y ago
  > Yes, but animal agriculture can be less harmful if you do less of it
  - mdp2021 4y ago
    I beg your pardon? It is not just a matter of "raising less animals", it is also (and mainly) a matter of raising them sensibly.
    - giraffe_lady 4y ago
      It is mostly a matter of raising less animals. No other factor or approach or combination of them can address these things alone, reduction is a necessary step. Defining any of this as "sensible" is an error imo. In a sense it's certainly sensible to have the goal of providing accessibly-priced meat to every member of a large country. Each step along the way is sensible, I'm sure. But then we end up here and there is nothing sensible about it. The sheer scale required to provide all that flesh is nearly profane in its own right. There is simply and frankly no way to do it responsibly at the scale we've chosen to do it. It seems meat will either remain built on human, animal and ecological exploitation at an incomprehensible scale, or it will revert to a rare and expensive luxury mostly available only to an economic elite. I haven't seen a compelling vision of any alternative.

Elgasso 4y ago

[dead]

hospitalJail 4y ago

I went vegetarian and things were going great. I was checking my micro and macro nutrients, things were perfect. I got a new job and I had to take a drug test. My creatine levels were too low and I failed/had to repeat the drug test. I ended up having to pee first thing in the morning to make my creatine levels higher. This was the most painful thing I've experienced in my life for about 3 hours as I waited for the place to open. That sucked. Later, my kid had low iron levels. I imagine I probably did too. Sure people are able to live a life without meat, but the nutrition from having meat is something I'm finding difficult to replace. We eat meat probably 2 or 3 times per week. Seems like a decent compromise, but I still feel like this is going to age poorly when people become more aware of animal consciousness.

teaearlgraycold 4y ago
I just take creatine and iron supplements. Really anyone that exercises should supplement creatine. I also eat meat occasionally, maybe once per week?
mr337 4y ago
2-3 times a week is exactly what is recommended [1]. There are several heath issues with high red meat intake, the biggest and not so fun is Colon Cancer. I know two people that lost the battle with colcon cancer. It is a bugger to diagnose, treat, and recurrence. 1 - https://www.aicr.org/cancer-prevention/recommendations/limit-consumption-of-red-and-processed-meat/ https://www.aicr.org/cancer-prevention/recommendations/limit...
LesZedCB 4y ago
I've been a highly athletic veg/vegan for a decade and not had any major issues, sans maybe B12 or vitamin d occasionally. plenty of veg friends experienced the same. vitamin supplements are easy to take.
PretzelPirate 4y ago
I'd love to know what you were eating. I've been vegan for over 13 years and I eat a lot of processed foods. My most recent blood test showed everything in the middle of the healthy range, and I had too much iron. I wonder if it's genetic, but my parents don't go to the doctor so I don't know anything about their health. I don't supplement, but eat the vegan equivalent of the standard American diet.

stametseater 4y ago

Look up "antimicrobial resistance" (AMR) and see where the deaths attributed to this are occurring. South Asia (e.g. India, etc) and Africa. Regions with inadequate healthcare for humans, where front-line antibiotics get spammed, where people don't complete the full course of treatment for lack of resources or understanding. It's not coming from the 'factory farms' of developed nations.

jes5199 4y ago

the RethinkX paper says that most farmed meat will be replaced by cheaper precision fermentation proteins by 2030 https://www.rethinkx.com/food-and-agriculture https://www.rethinkx.com/food-and-agriculture

MichaelNolan 4y ago
I love the optimism, and the ideas in all of the rethinkX papers. They are great reads. Their predictions for food and agriculture might indeed happen, but not by 2030. The dairy predictions in that paper seem the most likely to occur. Their paper on energy is also a fun read.

abeppu 4y ago

The discussion here seems to have ignored what seems like the interesting/new part of this. There has been plenty of prior research and media around blanket use of antibiotics creating _drug resistant_ bacteria which are harder to fight with drugs. But this is saying that additionally because some antibiotics are similar to chemicals endogenously produced within our own bodies, they also produce bacteria which our bodies are less effective at fighting on their own. I.e. this isn't just about the use of antibiotics -- this is about the use of antibiotics which are _similar to parts of our own immune systems_. Using antibiotics which are more dissimilar to our own immune responses would create _drug resistant_ bacteria but not _immune resistant_ bacteria.

ciconia 4y ago
This isn't just about antibiotics, it's also about monoculture. Both of those combined lead to a never ending arms race.
- GLGirty 4y ago
  > a never ending arms race Did you mean, "the great filter?"
- abeppu 4y ago
  > In the study, E coli carrying a resistance gene, called MCR-1, were exposed to AMPs known to play important roles in innate immunity in chickens, pigs, and humans. If the same kinds of AMPs appear across mammals and birds, breaking the monoculture (by e.g. raising animals of different breeds and species etc) but still using this class of antibiotics would still seem likely to cause the immune resistance problem. I'm not advocating for the monoculture-based practices, but I don't see how it's related to this specific mechanism.
  - darkerside 4y ago
    I think the connection to monoculture is that specific pathogens could decimate homogenous populations (see Irish potato famine), making widespread antibiotic use necessary in a much more preventative way

scythe 4y ago

Far be it from me to defend something as generally odious as the use of antibiotics in agriculture, but this article refers to one specific class of antibiotics, described as "antimicrobial peptides" but more precisely polymyxins, and particularly to colistin. You may be familiar with colistin as an "antibiotic of last resort" which is heavily restricted even in medicine. But check the list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_use_in_livestock http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_use_in_livestock You will notice that all but two are not peptides. "Peptides" are themselves a broad class of chemical, not implying a mechanism of action — contrast beta-lactams which damage cell walls — and bacitracin (which is distinct) has been used in poultry in the United States for fifty years without creating any immune-bypassing microorganisms. It should be distinguished from the polymyxins, the colistin family, which share a mechanism of action and are particularly important in the treatment of infections which have become resistant to other antibiotics. I was unable to find any evidence of polymyxins being used in agriculture in the United States or the West more broadly. http://www.msdvetmanual.com/pharmacology/antibacterial_agents/polymyxins_use_in_animals http://www.msdvetmanual.com/pharmacology/antibacterial_agent... >Polymyxin is not labeled for oral or parental use for any veterinary species in the US. That is not to justify the use of antibiotics in agriculture, which threatens millions of lives by endangering one of the most valuable medical technologies in human history, but it is not helpful to make claims which are not supported by the evidence. The use of colistin — or any polymyxins — in pigs in China is egregious (and has been belatedly banned by Chinese authorities in 2016). Linking this to meat consumption in the United States, where polymyxins are not used in agriculture, is suspect.

jelliclesfarm 4y ago

Never have humans in the history of their entire existence consumed so much meat in their daily diet. To imagine that this comes with no consequences is just naive.

kahrl 4y ago
"Never have humans in the history of their entire existence consumed so much meat in their daily diet." Source: jelliclesfarm's mind. Inuits would like a word with you.
- jelliclesfarm 4y ago
  Right. So they hunted seasonally. They consume fish and also bird eggs. Most importantly, they didn’t eat factory farm meats. It seems to me that you are purposely omitting the context for a ‘gotcha’. [..]Hunted meats: Sea mammals such as walrus, seal, and whale. Whale meat generally comes from the narwhal, beluga whale and the bowhead whale. The latter is able to feed an entire community for nearly a year from its meat, blubber, and skin. Inuit hunters most often hunt juvenile whales which, compared to adults, are safer to hunt and have tastier skin. Ringed seal and bearded seal are the most important aspect of an Inuit diet and is often the largest part of an Inuit hunter's diet. Land mammals such as reindeer (caribou), polar bear, and muskox Birds and their eggs Saltwater and freshwater fish including sculpin, Arctic cod, Arctic char, capelin and lake trout. While it is not possible to cultivate native plants for food in the Arctic, Inuit have traditionally gathered those that are naturally available, including: Berries including crowberry and cloudberry Herbaceous plants such as grasses and fireweed Tubers and stems including mousefood, roots of various tundra plants which are cached by voles in burrows. Roots such as tuberous spring beauty and sweet vetch Seaweed[..] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit_cuisine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit_cuisine
  - kahrl 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - 4y ago

decafninja 4y ago

Tangent, but my wife's side of the family is Korean, whereas myself and my side of the family is Korean American. I was surprised at how liberally antibiotics are given out in the Korean medical system, even for health issues that shouldn't be bacterial. Many members of her family routinely pop antibiotic pills to treat the common cold or flu. They don't take a "full course" either - just a pill a day for a few days until they feel better. When they got Covid, they were again popping antibiotic pills to "treat" it. They swear it works, and this behavior is apparently commonplace there. I have very positive views on the Korean medical system, and think it generally beats the American one in almost every aspect. But this attitude towards antibiotics was shocking. My wife doesn't partake in this mainly because antibiotics are extremely rough on her stomach. I don't think they're having problems with antibiotic resistance there either, so what gives?

Auracle 4y ago
We live in an interconnected world so I don't think there would be any localized antibiotic resistance - the effect of that will diffuse across the planet quickly. That said, I wonder what their IBS rates are like. That can't be great for their gut biome.
- davidjones332 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - tcoff91 4y ago
    My gut is only healthy when I'm mostly eating plants, it's crazy to make a blanket statement that eating plants is bad for your gut. How are you supposed to get fiber without plants?
    - ted_bunny 4y ago
      If it sounds so ridiculous, maybe consider that you're putting words in their mouth.
    - 4y ago

samanator 4y ago

> ...the prevalence of these strains of E coli have dropped steeply since China banned the use of colistin as a growth promoter, suggesting that these genes carry other “fitness disadvantages” for the pathogens. That sentence seems pretty important but is hardly given any attention. It seems like if we simply stop using the antibiotics then the dangerous strains will die out on their own?

etiam 4y ago
No. The numbers expressing it drop, but there are often enough advantages in competition situations that the trait stays around and can rapidly recolonize the population. Carrying the genetic material is a slight cost. Expressing it costs more, but that could be made conditional. Furthermore, note that in this case, the point is that the trait also confers resistance to the same type of molecule occurring naturally as part of the innate immune system of animals, meaning that for bacterial species with a large pathogenic component to their lifestyle the resistance retains a fitness advantage in their niche.

stainablesteel 4y ago

this is just another anti-farm hitpiece i don't care for this perspective, I'd rather have locally grown food over outsourcing it to some geopolitical rival with animal cruelty problems

BetterAdmin 4y ago

[flagged]

amriksohata 4y ago

What infuriates me is the big companies selling them to farmers, probably already know this and have done for years. But they continue to get away with it.

CatWChainsaw 4y ago
Kind of like that Shell report. Money now is more important than any future consequences.
- amriksohata 4y ago
  and they can use that money later on to influence the media and court cases against them or pay them off

creato 4y ago

I’ve been hearing about this issue in some form for what seems like the last several decades. It seems like there have been some impacts, regulations followed, and then things turn out okay. I’m not aware of any significant human health impact from agricultural antibiotic resistance (unlike human antibiotics). Is there a reason to get so invested in this issue beyond making sure regulators stay on top of it the way they have been?

symlinkk 4y ago

Organic food doesn’t use antibiotics right? Seems like another reason to go organic if you can spare the $

heavyset_go 4y ago

80% of antibiotics in the US are used in animal husbandry, often because antibiotics cause animals to grow bigger. Until very recently, farmers could buy 55-gallon drums of antibiotics from Alibaba.com. Those antibiotics persist in the environment, where their exposure to scores of different species of bacteria causes resistance to develop across gene pools, which is bad because of horizontal gene transfer. The majority of communicable diseases in humans have zoonotic origins. It's insane that still wasn't enough, and the industry is now using antibacterial peptides that mirror innate immune systems.