Advocacy Project: The Untreatable Epidemic

When people talk about factory farming and modern agricultural practices, we tend to think about pollution, animal cruelty, and fattened, hormone-filled meat. These are definitely important concerns; but there is an even more insidious problem that can become a major threat to public health– antibiotic-resistant infections.

Right now, 80% of the antibiotics made in the U.S. are fed to factory-farmed animals to promote growth and to counter unsanitary living conditions. Most of this ends up in manure, which is used to fertilize our vegetables. The rest of this 80% remains in the meat that we will eat. Throughout this process, bacteria have countless opportunities to be exposed to antibiotics in small amounts. The low concentrations of these drugs don’t wipe out all the germs in the animal/region/food, but they kill enough non-resistant bugs that the ones who happen to be resistant would have less competition for resources. With more space and nutrients available to them, antibiotic-resistant bacteria are free to grow out of control and completely take over whichever animal/region/food the antibiotics happen to be in. In addition, resistant bacteria have the ability to copy their DNA and transfer it to their non-resistant peers.

Here’s the CDC’s illustration of the chain of resistance and infection:

(Courtesy of the CDC)

                                                            (Courtesy of the CDC)

If there are high enough numbers of these bacteria, they will become pathogenic and cause diseases. And the most concerning part is that these are the same medicines that are used to treat human diseases. So if someone shows up to the hospital with resistant infections, the drugs would no longer work.

This is exactly what’s been happening with the recent outbreak of Salmonella in the United States. So far, about 500 people have been infected in 25 states. There are seven strains of bacteria involved, all of which are resistant to antibiotics. This has been traced back to a poultry producer in California that – you guessed it – use antibiotics in their animal feed.

The CDC estimates that at least 2 million Americans end up in the hospital with antibiotic-resistant infections each year, and this number is increasing.

resistant_infections

                     (Via steiros.com)

There is no doubt that antibiotic resistant is a major problem. But New York representative Louise Slaughter proposed a bill last year called the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (PAMTA) that, if passed, would require the FDA to re-review its approval for seven major classes of antibiotics used in agriculture that are also important for human infections. This could mean huge changes in the way factory farms work. Unfortunately, there has been so much lobbying against this bill that it has been referred to committee and pretty much forgotten. My advocacy project is trying to drum up support for PAMTA through a petition and a letter to our representative, Glenn Thompson. But even if this bill is never passed, hopefully people will become more aware of this issue and more things will be done to address it.

 

Partial List of Sources:

http://www.steiros.com/Antibiotic_Stewardship.html

http://www.fosterfarms.com/about/raise.asp

Turkey With a Side of Guilt

Every Thanksgiving, I come across at least one ad or article about “heritage turkeys.” And I always get the impression that they are just another vegan-super-expensive-high-quality-psuedo-organic fad. This year I’ve seen at least six ads on Facebook alone, so I finally caved in and decided to do some research on heritage turkeys—after all, it might have something to do with science!

Screen Shot 2013-11-23 at 11.40.20 PMScreen Shot 2013-11-23 at 11.37.40 PM

Basically, there are two types of turkeys: white industrial turkeys, and several breeds of “heritage” turkeys that closely resemble the wild ones hunted by Pilgrims and Native Americans. Both descended from the same wild ancestors, but the white turkeys have been selectively bred over hundreds of years to grow as fast as possible and produce the most amount of meat. As a result, they can no longer fly. Because they are so top-heavy and it’s hard for them to walk or even stand up after a certain age, they can’t mate, so they have to be artificially inseminated. And while wild turkeys are intelligent and aggressive (Benjamin Franklin considered it a symbol of “the temper and conduct of America”), white industrial ones are apparently very dim-witted because of all the inbreeding.

Bill Niman, who raises both breeds on his ranch, observed that “not only did the industry breed the ability to fly and [procreate] out of the white birds; they bred the personality out of them too. It’s hard to interact with them—they have limited cerebral capacity.”

In addition, white turkeys are dramatically less healthy—they are more prone to disease and require a lot of antibiotics in their diet, and have a lifespan of twelve months while heritage turkeys can live for seven years.

Selective breeding seems to have done some crazy things in this case; heritage and white turkeys are about as similar as German shepherds and pugs. Finding out all of this has made me really interested in getting a heritage turkey this year. Not surprisingly, they are extremely expensive and can cost as much as $7 per pound because they take so long to raise and require so much living space. But it might be a worthwhile investment, especially compared to the moral baggage of buying (and supporting) something that’s the product of extreme industrialization and shady farming practices and messing with biology in a way that’s not really beneficial to anyone. We should definitely look into this more!

Sources:

http://www.localharvest.org/features/heritage-turkeys.jsp

http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/genetic/genetically-modified-turkey1.htm