[lbarrett]

The overuse of antibiotics in large-scale animal farming is particularly terrible; many are given low doses of antibiotics as part of their food [1]. This gives bacteria lots of time and selective breeding to become resistant, and it's probably the worst thing we could do for the long-term health of humanity.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_use_in_livestock#Un...

[eeZah7Ux]

Interesting to notice how europe banned antibiotics while China and US are doing nothing about it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_use_in_livestock

[Ovah]

The Wiki statement that Europe has banned antibiotics for growth promotion since 2006 may be true legally, but not in practice.

In fact, Denmark has used antibiotics to prevent infections in pig farming[1] up until at least the summer of 2016[2]. As such, some farms have 88% of their pig population infected with MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus)[3], and over 10,000 Danes have been infected with pig-MRSA.[4]

(all sources in Swedish) [1]http://www.expressen.se/gt/darfor-ar-det-danska-griskottet-s... [2] http://www.lantbruk.com/lantbruk/tuffare-regler-kring-antibi... [3] http://www.svt.se/nyheter/danska-bonder-kan-sprida-antibioti... [4] http://www.svt.se/nyheter/utrikes/tusentals-danskar-smittade...

[gmrple]

MRSA (Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus)

I just don't want anyone thinking MRSA stands for anything it doesn't.

[richardwhiuk]

What?

[delackner]

Myself included, many people read that to be Multiply Resistant, AKA resistant to most (all?) antibiotics.

[richardwhiuk]

That's nice, but incorrect, and I suspect a backcronym formed by not knowing what it stood for...

[maxerickson]

The US has banned the use of medically important antibiotics as feed additives:

https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/03/fda-livestock-antibiotic...

It's not a particularly aggressive action but it probably clears the 'nothing' bar.

[Fomite]

It's the most direct "there is no good reason to use this" ban.

There's really three reasons to use antibiotics in livestock:

1. Growth promotion 2. Prophylaxis 3. Treating disease.

The ban hits #1. #3 really doesn't deserve to be banned - it's a legitimate use of antibiotics in veterinary medicine. #2 is where there's still a problem, because the use of antibiotics as a preventative runs the gamut from a perfectly legitimate veterinary intervention to an egregious misuse of antibiotics depending on the circumstance.

[kevin_thibedeau]

Lobbied for by domestic pharma no doubt.

[mschuster91]

> while China and US are doing nothing about it

China doesn't really care about the environment. Their top priority is growth in order to avoid social unrest, and for feeding all the people they need all the food they can get - and if antibiotics makes farming more productive, they'll do it.

The US, on the other hand, has the problem that Big Ag is a powerful lobby. And Trump, given his total lack of understanding on climate and environmental issues, won't do anything to change that.

[BurningFrog]

China is in a phase of its development where the environment is not the most important thing. Once they're rich enough they'll put resources on fixing that.

This is how every rich country went through industrialization. Not because they were all immoral, but because they were poor.

The good news is that China is somehow doing this in fast forward. Each Chinese year seems to be 3 years in a regular economy, and their enormous push for solar power is (I hope) just one sign of what's to come.

[BinaryWaves]

China uses the most renewable resources of any nation and just committed to 2+ billion expansion of their development. Never wise to be dismissive and generalize an entire country when it is a complex landscape of ideals and practices

[kayoone]

Could be because they need to, not because they want to. The air pollution in some of their cities is downright hazardous so they have to do something and it also makes economic sense by now with the falling prices of solar. I don't buy that they are suddenly really interested in sustainability.

[dpc59]

Every one that's trying to save the environnement is doing it because we need to.

[JabavuAdams]

> China uses the most renewable resources of any nation

Percentage-wise?

[frozenport]

I don't think it is Big Ag, because Big Ag would be more than happy to sell a premium product at a higher cost. It's more of a consumer demand thing.

[Retric]

No, you sell more product when the price decreases making the industry more profitable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons's_paradox is the same basic idea.

[frozenport]

I think the amount of food they can sell is limited by appetite. The only question is at what price point.

[Retric]

US corn production may have started by feeding people, then animals, then substituting for other food (corn syrup>sugar), then being burned in cars. Which just shows people tend to find ever wider demand for products as they get cheaper.

Meat demand as price drops may end up in pet food or 'corn' flakes, but the usage does not really matter. In competitive markets producers tend to make a fixed percentage of sales as profits. Thus, increasing total sales tends to also increase industry profits.

[Fomite]

First, "Europe banned antibiotics" is a massive oversimplification, and ignores that similar steps are being taken in the U.S.

Second, while the European bans are doing good things, it's far from perfect: http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2016/10/eu-report... . Use of fluoroquinolones, macrolides and polymixins (including colistin) rose - Europe is weirdly fond of it.

[mtw]

For those who are concerned about the issue, one good step is change your diet to whole plants diet + wild caught fish (e.g. salmon). Livestock meat, esp. red meat and processed meat have adverse health effects, esp. north america

[cxseven]

When it's wild-caught, make sure it's sustainably harvested. Alaskan fish is actually great in this regard. (Go figure one of their biggest industries is OK with government regulation.)

[Fomite]

Also it still needs to be cooked. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/01/1...

[Fomite]

Ironically, the largest source of food-borne illness in the United States is produce.

[dcosson]

Source needed.

But seriously, antibiotic resistance is a population-wide problem and you personally not eating meat won't protect you against antibiotic resistant bacteria.

Not to mention the idea that red meat specifically causes adverse health effects in most people is an old idea that modern nutrition studies have mostly not shown to be true.

[sulam]

You've misunderstood the parent post. By embracing non-polluting alternatives, you promote and induce market growth along environmentally healthy lines and deny resources to unhealthy options. This may not protect you immediately, but over time it can absolutely work provided a sufficiently large group is able to act collectively.

There is plenty of evidence that this approach has worked in other domains to create behavioral changes in large, impersonal organizations.

[JohnJamesRambo]

Do you really think there is enough wild caught salmon to feed us all? We have to have solutions that scale and really work.

[benjaminjackman]

Ok so what he said less salmon i.e. Plants only then.

[dcosson]

Maybe I did misunderstand. In that case I would think that buying locally raised, organic, grass-fed beef would be a more comparable alternative than wild salmon (Though neither is sustainable enough to replace the current levels of beef consumption for everyone).

[maxerickson]

The use of Ionophores in feed doesn't seem to be a huge problem (they are a substantial portion of the total by weight, but I think not a majority).

[candiodari]

The thing to note, however, is that once the horse is out of the barn, closing the barn door is futile. In fact it may very well be counterproductive if it leads to infected meat spreading further.

[WildUtah]

Antibiotics are a renewable resource. If we could prohibit all use of a class of antibiotics for a time, probably decades, bacteria will stop spending energy on resistance and become vulnerable again.

Antibiotic resistance is a problem with a political solution. It just takes coordination and cooperation worldwide to do the right thing instead of chasing short-term profit.

So I guess we'd better hope for a technological solution instead.

[saycheese]

Unable to edit my prior comment, but found research that appears to dispute your claim; citing notable research might help me better understand your claim.

It is very possible that I'm missing something, but that's not how evolution works to my knowledge, adoption of substantially new genetic features is rapid, but refinements or removal of unrelated genetic code is slow if it is not impacted by the substantive mutations.

For more information, see "Long-term phenotypic evolution of bacteria":

http://www.columbia.edu/~gap2118/papers/nature13827.pdf

[chamoda]

"bacteria will stop spending energy on resistance and become vulnerable again."

Correct me if I'm wrong but ones bacteria modified by natural selection they will continue the resistance (genes) in future bacterial generations.

[glormph]

No expert, but theoretically new mutations that eliminate resistance may be beneficial by allowing the newly mutated bacteria to outgrow the resistant ones if the mutation leads to spending less energy. Edit: there will also be non-resistant bacteria in the population so the mutation to remove resistance may not even be necessary.

[majkinetor]

You are wrong.

'Use it or loose it' apply to bacteria far more then for example humans.

Evolution doesn't work the way you think it does. Its not an adaption to something to all eternity but adaptation for current surroundings - once the context is changed, the genome will change too.

The process is simple - the first bacteria that ditch the antibiotic resistence gene will multiply more and use more available resources so other bacteria that have that gene gene (witch becomes resource hog since it doesn't contribute to survival any more) will die out.

[ansible]

And you are also wrong.

Antibiotic resistant genes don't just disappear when we stop using antibiotics. They will remain in the gene pool effectively forever at low levels.

After the first time antibiotic resistance is developed, the gene frequency in the bacteria population may drop to nearly zero after it isn't so useful. But it will come back again very quickly with the reintroduction of that antibiotic. The time scale will be much quicker than when the bacteria first developed antibiotic resistance.

Widespread use of antibiotics (especially at low doses) was and is a criminal mistake.

[majkinetor]

You are right, but perspective is needed. How quick is quickly ? Is it quicker to return then they loose it ? Or is it slower to return then to loose it ? If so, we can circulate certain types of ABs effectivelly.

> Widespread use of antibiotics (especially at low doses) was and is a criminal mistake.

This is not only human made thing. Widespread AB use is common in nature. But AB use for growth promotion IS criminal. And AB should be given as last resort not as usual practice. Good nutrition and adequate supplemenation can cover the rest:

- Retynol is epic for mucosal layer protection.

- Vitamin D is great anti-infective agent.

- Vitamin C is awesome prevention and potential cure for helicobacter pylori.

- Many spices are fantastic as ABs.

- Fermented foods such as kefir and stuff like spirulina are great addition.

- High carb diet reduces immunity a lot.

You don't really need ABs every freaking day - its typical that kids have 6 or more tours in a year. My kid is raised with above principles and more and never had an AB even with kindergarten (7 years now).

There were also some other problematic procedures such apendixtomy that influence this or usage of ABs with viral diseses (typial to prevent opportunistic infections) or for disease that it doesn't affect much and even makes the organ worse, such as otitis.

NSAID use is also contributing A LOT to this. People now bring down temperature on 37.5 and if you don't do it on 38 you are considered lunatic. I simply do no do it up until 40.5 (talking about kids, the exact protocol is contextual and depends on age, length etc). The science showed that when you do that, the disease last longer and mortality is proved to be higher on animals. Brain knows perfectly well when to stop it unless it is broken itself (i.e. meningitis).

[yborg]

It would appear that the science is still not decided on this. If the resistance is carried on plasmids, it may disappear relatively rapidly from a population if the selection pressure for it is removed:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02017169 http://bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1944394

There are other studies indicating that in the wild plasmid loss is a slow process:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3966108/

And resistance expressed by genes that become part of the core genome of a bacterial species would presumably be much harder to lose.

[BurningFrog]

> Antibiotic resistant genes don't just disappear when we stop using antibiotics. They will remain in the gene pool effectively forever at low levels.

They very likely already were in the gene pool before we went on the antibiotics binge. Remember that our antibiotics were discovered in nature. They're used by other species to fight bacteria. Penicillin was used by moulds for unknown millions of years before we coopted it.

Since bacteria multiply within days or even hours, evolution works very fast in them. This is why they develop resistance within a few decades. How fast they would lose the resistance if we stopped is AFAIK not something we can know until we do it and see what happens.

[cwmma]

You would be right if the antibiotics resistance was 'free', i.e. had no downside, but IIRC it does pose a cost of some sort so when not in an environment with antibiotics there is evolutionary pressure to lose the resistance.

[saycheese]

>> "...bacteria will stop spending energy on resistance and become vulnerable again."

Source?

[kwhitefoot]

Standard theory of evolution: organisms that spend energy on features that do not contribute to their fitness will be at a disadvantage in the long run compared to others of otherwise similar type that do not. The others will have more energy to devote to reproduction.

[saycheese]

Citing notable research might help me better understand your claim; it is very possible that I'm missing something, but that's not how evolution works to my knowledge, adoption of substantially new genetic features is rapid, but refinements or removal of unrelated genetic code is slow if it is not impacted by the substantive mutations.

Source: http://www.columbia.edu/~gap2118/papers/nature13827.pdf

[gerbilly]

Resistant bacteria usually become resistant by giving up a metabolic pathway.

[a-saleh]

I wish I could have read more than the abstract, but maybe this [1] ... I would especially like to know what do they mean by "Unfortunately, the available data suggest that the rate of reversibility will be slow at the community level"

[1] http://www.nature.com/nrmicro/journal/v8/n4/pdf/nrmicro2319....

[smhost]

From that same paper:

> In hospitals, both modelling and analysis of the correlations between antibiotic resistance and variation in antibiotic use show that alterations in antibiotic use can cause rapid changes (in the order of days to months) in the frequency of resistance. By contrast, when the fitness cost of resistance is the main driving force behind its reversal, the rate of change is expected to be much slower (months to years).

I think what that means is that hospitals are able to create more selective pressure by rotating through different kinds of antibiotics.

[Fomite]

Said antibiotics are most often used for growth promotion, rather than to treat disease. That's becoming less common, but it's still a complex problem.

[curun1r]

Yes and no. Said antibiotics are given because we know that the diet we're feeding them will cause them to develop infections. Cows aren't naturally healthy eating corn/soy.

For so many reasons, we need to end crop subsidies in this country.

[jmartinpetersen]

It's been known since the 50's that giving penicillin to livestock increases growth rate. Farmers have understood that and used that.

The antibiotics counters and interacts in all sorts of ways we don't really understand (similar to how we don't really, really understand how the human gut works), but one of the ways it surely works is to counter problems caused by unsuitable living conditions.

Ending crop subsidies is probably a good idea in most of the world, but it certainly won't solve the overuse of antibiotics in agriculture.

[Qantourisc]

In a way this is surprising to me. Shouldn't this destroy the gut flora, making it harder to digest/use the food ? Then again their entire gut flora might be anti-biotic resistant ....

[maxerickson]

Several of the antibiotics in use as feed additives act selectively, changing the mix of microorganisms rather than destroying them all.

I swear I'm not a shill for big ionophore, but this is something they do in ruminants, they shift the mix away from one that tends to lead to "bloat" when the animals are fed a lot of grain.

[bodski]

Gut flora in humans appears to have a significant influence on weight gain/loss. Perhaps ABs fed to livestock tilt towards weight gain.

[IslaDeEncanta]

Actually, that's often the case with cattle.

[Fomite]

Cows can have pretty intensive levels of antibiotic resistant gut flora.

[Fomite]

There's three reasons for using antibiotics in livestock:

1. Growth promotion 2. Prophylactic treatment (what you're suggesting) 3. The treatment of actual disease

Those go from the most to the least problematic - but I was mostly addressing the idea that a decrease in antibiotics would result in more animal products with bacterial contamination. For #1, that's not true, and for #2 it's not linear (infections in animals don't necessarily mean contaminated food products).

When we talk about reducing antibiotic use in livestock, it's usually focused on #1 and putting #2 in the hands of vets (prophylactic treatments when there's actual risk of disease). Rarely do we actually suggest banning #3.

[flavor8]

> For so many reasons, we need to end crop subsidies in this country.

We also need to reduce consumption of meat, and work towards raising it more healthily. It should be common sense that an unstressed animal fed the diet that it's evolved to thrive on would yield better meat (e.g. grass fed beef is objectively superior to cows fattened on corn.)

Of course it is more expensive to do this, but so be it. There are plenty of cheap sources of nutritious proteins; people could be directed to adjust their expectations. Of course, there are many deep pocketed industry resources that would be against such an adjustment, and there's a new deep-pockets friendly administration in charge, so there's little hope of this happening in the near future...

[gumby]

> [banning use of antibiotics in animal feed] may very well be counterproductive if it leads to infected meat spreading further.

This isn't why they put antibiotics in the food; it's because animals that eat bulk antibiotics gain more weight over the short term than animals that don't. Probably by killing off all the gut bacteria (except the antibiotic resistant ones) that might compete for nutrients. The animals are grown quickly then killed.

If an animal is actually sick it's treated differently, or simply destroyed. Even farmers who don't use antibiotics to stimulate growth will treat their sick animals!

BTW the resistant gut bacteria we're talking about are the ones that get people sick like e coli.