Will New Antibiotic Regulations Actually Do Anything?

In late 2013, the Food and Drug Administration issued guidelines to address one of the most contentious issues in agriculture right now: the use of antibiotics in animal feed. The new rules are aimed at factory farms using 30 million pounds of antibiotics every year to stop the spread of diseases and help the animals pack on the pounds before slaughter time. In total, that accounts for a staggering 80 percent of all antibiotic use in the U.S.

Since humans use some of the same antibiotics to fight diseases, public health advocates worry the practice leads to “super bugs” – germs that can shrug off a drug prescription.

A mounting pile of evidence indicates that antibiotics in our meat are already playing such a role. The F.D.A. found drug resistant bacteria in more than half of the country’s meat. A study released last July also shows a number of workers at a industrial hog farms walking around with “pig MRSA,” a strain of drug-resistant bacteria more often found in American hogs. It’s a scary set of connections when you consider that more people die each year from resistant infections each year than die from HIV/AIDS.

Around the internet, critics say the measure won’t do enough to confront the public health crisis for two main reasons. First, the F.D.A. could have gone much further in the new rules, banning all low-dose antibiotic use. Instead, the agency released a set of “voluntary guidelines.” Drug companies now have 90 days to choose whether they will cease listing growth promotion as a legitimate use for antibiotics. Those who agree will be given another three years to change the labels. In an editorial for the Los Angeles Times, Peter Lehner points out that despite repeated warnings from the medical community, the meat industry hasn’t volunteered any changes. Sales of antibiotics for animal use have only gone up over the last ten years.

Second, the new policies don’t get to the root of some problems in the meat industry. Meat producers don’t just use antibiotics to help animals pack on the pounds; the drugs also slow the spread of disease among crowded animals. As a result, problematic uses of antibiotics could continue as a medical necessity because in factory farms, there are plenty of sick — or potentially sick — animals.

Still, some in the business recognize the guidelines as a challenge to current practices. “Antibiotics are not the only way of keeping animals healthy,” Dave Warner, a spokesman for the National Pork Producers Council, told the Capital Press. “There’s genetics, there is the feed and things they can do there and certainly the environment in which the animals live. All those things will be taken into consideration now.”

Some places already have done some such consideration. A ban in Denmark on sub-therapeutic antibiotics more than a decade ago first led to greater mortality among piglets, but some simple changes to protocols fixed the problem. By improving conditions and giving weaners more time with their mothers to develop an immune system, pork farmers cut their need for antibiotics in half and still upped total production numbers.

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