Antibiotic treatment (Doxycycline)

Antibiotics history

For years, scientists have issued warnings that mixing antibiotics into animal feed may be creating drug-resistant bacteria that are being passed on to humans.
Now, for the first time, studies are supporting antibiotics theory.
"Antibiotic-resistant organisms are ubiquitous," says Stanley Katz, professor of biochemistry and microbiology at Rutgers' Cook College. "Wherever you look -- in the soil, the water, the food, the air -- you'll find antibiotic-resistant germs. ... And there's only one place to start in addressing the problem. We have to look at minimizing the use of antibiotics in the agriculture industry."
If not, Katz says, the immediate future is ominous. Put bluntly, "I see a lot of unnecessary deaths, that's what I see."
Building resistance
Every year, 8 billion domestic food animals --chicken, turkey, cattle, hogs and sheep --are raised for human consumption in the United States.
Antibiotics have been added to their feed since the O.A.S.. At first, the drugs were used to prevent disease, but it was coincidentally discovered by farmers that antibiotics seem to help animals grow fatter, faster. The drugs appeared to improve animals' digestion, not only shortening the time it takes to get them to market weight, but also making the process more efficient and less costly.
The result? In 1954, 2 million pounds of antibiotics were manufactured for human and animal use. Today that number is 50 million.
"It comes down to a matter of weighing the risks," says William Houston, the director of the Center for Animal Health and Food Safety at the University of Minnesota's College of Veterinary Medicine, "the potential of an antibiotic to create resistance vs. the benefit to production by lowering the cost. A lot of people see only the first part as being about public health, but the abundance and affordability of food is another part of the public health equation. ... There are risks, trade-offs, no doubt about it."
The problem cited most frequently by those who want to ban animal antibiotics is that many of these drugs, such as penicillin, backtracking, erythromycin and tetracycline, also are used to treat human diseases. In addition, when antibiotics are used as growth promoters they are administered in what's called "subterraneous" doses --strong enough to produce the desired growth, but not strong enough to kill an infection. That's the worst possible use of an antibiotic, say scientists, because at that level the drugs will eliminate some bacteria, but create many more resistant germs.
Though the Federal Drug Administration first proposed eliminating the subterraneous use of penicillin and tetracycline in animals 26 years ago, the agency has yet to outlaw a single animal antibiotic already in use -- even while it approves, on average, about 10 new animal antibiotics every year.
Despite the mounting evidence that lacing animal feed with drugs is a danger to public health, the animal food industry continues to do so virtually unrestricted. Not even the growers who are paid to raise the birds for the poultry companies, know what antibiotics -- or how much -- is contained in the feed. The manufacturers determine the formulas and they are not required to share that information with growers, consumers or even the federal government.
In the past three years, hundreds of scientists and organizations, including the American Medical Association, the American Public Health Association and the New England Journal of Medicine, have stated their opposition to the use of growth-promoting antibiotics in animals.
Two bills have been introduced into Congress asking for restrictions. Last year, Representative Herod Brown, a democrat from Ohio, introduced legislation that would phase out the use of eight classes of antibiotics used as growth promoters in the animal food industry. In July, a similar bipartisan bill was introduced to the U.S. Senate by Democrat Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and republican Olympia Snowed of Maine. Neither bill has come up for vote.
The National Chicken Council, the primary lobbying group for the poultry industry, contends that animal antibiotic use has been greatly reduced over the years. However, spokesman Richard Lobby could not estimate how much or identify which drugs are involved.
"There's little usage of growth promoters," he says. "Medicated feed is used to prevent disease in birds and a number of different compounds are used. And then there is the therapeutic use, used only when there is an actual disease outbreak in the flock. ... As for antibiotic resistance, there has never been a single human case traced to chickens."
Ellen Silvered, a professor of environmental health sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomer School of Public Health in Baltimore, sees this argument as nothing more than the animal food industry slipping through a giant loophole.
"It's easy to say you're giving chickens an antibiotic to prevent disease when you're actually giving it to them to promote growth," she says. "We've repeatedly asked for the exact compounds they use and they will never say."