Molina 1 Alyssa Molina English 1102 February 21, 2013 Antibiotics in the Meat Industry The meat industry

is like a machine because there are so many components within it that make it function the way it does. In my inquiry I asked, what is the role antibiotics play in the meat industry? It is a simple question; however I learned that this simple question wasnt going to lead me to a very straightforward answer. In fact, the answer was just going to lead me to more questions. Throughout my inquiry, I explored the role of antibiotics, how it is affecting the meat that is being produced, and how the public and the American Meat Institute feel about the rise of antibiotics in meat. It has occurred to me that many people are very unaware of the role antibiotics play in the meat industry and that is why there have been so many new websites and documentaries made on the topic. The overuse of antibiotics in the meat industry does affect humans by creating antibiotic-resistant bacterium which means that some drugs that used to cure illnesses are no longer able to do that job. That is why it not only good to educate oneself on the topic, but to form an opinion and to take that opinion and put it into action. Because lack of action will ensure that this is a continuous issue rather than a solved issue. When researching what the role antibiotics play in the meat industry is, I discovered that recently it has gone very viral that the meat industry currently consumes four-fifths of all antibiotics which was determined by the Pew Charitable Trusts group who added and compared antibiotic use on livestock farms versus human use. Their results showed that while 7.7 million antibiotics are sold to treat sick people, 29.9 million are sold for meat and poultry production. In

Molina 2 an article on MotherJones, it discussed how the meat producers are using vast quantities of these drugs every day in the water and feed of animals that are not even sick. Thus, the antibiotics are not even used for their true purpose. Instead they are used so that the animals will mature quicker, gain weight faster, and to prevent infections from occurring in the crowded factory conditions. Furthermore, the article states that while the meat industry claims its use has been steady over time with only a 0.2% increase, new FDA reports show that is has actually been a 2% increase which is a very big difference and demonstrates that their overuse of antibiotics is only growing. This antibiotic overuse and new statistics are not going completely unnoticed at all. In fact, Tom Philpott, a writer for Mother Jones, was outraged about the statistics regarding antibiotic use in livestock and stated that, While the FDA dithers with voluntary approaches to regulation, the meat industry is feasting on antibiotics and sending out product tainted with antibiotic resistant bugs. Obviously after reading a statement that said meat was becoming tainted by antibiotic overuse, I wondered if there truly was a connection between overuse of antibiotics in animals and antibiotic resistant diseases in humans. The answer is yes but then the questions becomes what do we exactly know and in how much detail? After researching the topic further, I found out that while we know for a fact that eighty percent of antibiotics sold in the United States go to chicken, pigs, and cows, we do not know what drugs they use on what animal and in what quantities exactly because the producers are not required to report this information. In the article, Farm Use of Antibiotics Defies Scrutiny, Glenn Morris, a scientist at the Infectious Diseases Division at Vanderbilt University, says that was one of the mains reasons why it is difficult to document the precise relationship between routine antibiotic use in animals and antibioticresistant infections in people. This view is also restated by William Flynn, the deputy director for

Molina 3 science policy at the FDA, when he says that, Antibiotic use in people can be closely monitored through the vast infrastructure of the nations health care system, but there is no equivalent for animals, making it harder to track use on farms and ranches. This article demonstrated how even an FDA official acknowledged the difficulty in tracking antibiotic overuse within the meat industry. The previous articles continually brought up the difficulty of tracking the antibiotics so I began to question if there were even studies that were able to prove the actual linkage between the antibiotic resistant infections in humans with the overuse of antibiotics in animals. I then found an article titled How Using Antibiotics in Animal Feed Creates Superbugs, which began by addressing how the collection of data for scientists is a very long process, and analyzing the data is as well and therefore it is not the scientists fault that it takes so long to publish the data collected in a study. However, although studying this microbiology is a long process there has been a great deal of information gained from them. In fact within the article it discusses a study recently published in the journal mBio, which validated the theory that an antibiotic-susceptible staph germ passed from humans into pigs and became resistant to the antibiotics tetracycline and methicillin. And then that antibiotic resistant staph somehow learned to jump back into humans. Lance Price, from Translational Genomics Research Institute, as well as 19 other countries completed a whole genome analysis on a staph strain called CC398(Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) and 88 other closely related variations. The reason for studying CC398 was because it appeared within the last decade in pigs, cattle, and poultry and since it has spread in humans it continues to kill about 20,000 people a year. The genetic analysis that was done allowed the study authors to trace the lineage of the livestock bug back to its antibioticsusceptible human ancestors. Lance Price felt these findings without a doubt prove that the

Molina 4 animal bacterium jumped back into humans with close exposure to livestock. Paul Keim, another study author, states that our inappropriate use of antibioticsis now coming back to haunt us. Noticeably it is very clear that many of the authors of this particular study firmly believe that antibiotics in livestock are a great contributor to the current rise of antibiotic-resistant bacterium that has been found within humans. Logically after reading articles about studies finding evidence that proved the linkage between antibiotics in livestock and antibiotic resistant infections in humans, I questioned what the government had done or tried to do about the antibiotic overuse. One would probably assume that because of these scientific findings it would be easy to ban antibiotics or at least have it regulated by the FDA; yet it is not that simple at all. By looking for ways in which the government has tried to regulate antibiotics, one of the things that I found out was that advocates against the overuse of antibiotics are pushing for the reintroduction of PAMTA (The Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act) to Congress. Advocates believe that PAMTA is critical to keep antibiotics working for human health and to avoid the harmful effects of the overuse of antibiotics in livestock. The Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act within two years would require the FDA to re-review approvals it previously issued for animal feed uses of seven classes of antibiotics that are important to human medicine. The approvals would be canceled for any antibiotics that are found to be unsafe from a resistance perspective. Thus, this would help control and regulate the antibiotics that are being put into the livestock The Union of Concerned Sciences actually posted an article in order to gain support for its reintroduction to Congress because they feel that although the FDA is aware of the antibiotic resistance due to overuse in animal agriculture the agencys process for withdrawing drugs from the market is way too slow. That is why this union finds it crucial that PAMPTA be reintroduced

Molina 5 to Congress and be passed that way it encourages producers to raise animals in better living conditions that are less susceptible to disease. Since the science community was obviously taking a stand against antibiotic use in agriculture, I wondered if there were maybe other groups that were not scientists but still were advocating against abuse of antibiotics within the meat industry. That is when I discovered a website called meatwithoutdrugs.org. This entire organization is frustrated with overuse of antibiotics and is trying to petition Trader Joe's to source only meat products without antibiotics. The website's goal was to get 200,000 to join and petition, but it has greatly exceeded that goal and has about 557,000 signatures already. This website is filled with videos educating people on antibiotic use in meat industry; however their sole purpose is not just to educate but to inspire the reader to want to take action against the antibiotics in agriculture. While continually searching of ways in which the public has tried to limit antibiotic use I came across a study recently published in January 2013, by Centers for Disease Control and is currently planned to be published in the March edition of Emerging Infectious Diseases Journal. The CDC Attribution of Foodborne Illness study showed illness was attributed to 17 different food categories. This study was obviously meant to investigate some of the ways the food we eat can harm us. In the overview of the site, it states that, We developed a method of attributing illnesses to specific food groups based on a decade of outbreak data, including those that implicate complex foods (that is, foods that have ingredients from several food categories.) The study was completed from 1998 to 2008 and within that period, 277 people died from foodborne illness linked to poultry, 19 percent, making poultry have more deaths than any other food commodities. Then when the category of meat and poultry were combined to make a broader category they accounted for 29% while the broader category of produce only accounted for 23%.

Molina 6 Even though this study was published not very long ago, it already has many different groups responding to it. In fact, one of these groups was the American Meat Institute and they responded to the recently published study by releasing a statement on their website. In the statement the Chief Scientist, Betsy Booren, begins by saying how happy the institute is that CDC has released their findings because it helps them improve the safety of their meat and poultry and public health strategies. She then states that because some of the data in this new paper is 15 year old it does not reflect the many changes and improvements that have occurred since the late 1990s because the data was collected from 1998-2008 even though the paper analyzing this data was published very recently. She adds to that point and says that the paper does not include data from the last five years when significant reductions in both bacteria on meat and poultry products have been noted by federal officials. The statement ends with her claiming that making meat and poultry products safe is the number one priority. Therefore, it is very clear that although the American Meat Institute decided to join the conversation, they did not choose to agree with any of the findings in the study, yet they definitely emphasized how grateful they were that the study was published. The American Meat Institute does not just respond to studies being published, it also responds to other meat myths on a website called MeatMythCrushers.org. I discovered this website while searching for other ways in which the institute publishes its views on certain topics. This website constantly is posting videos of interviews with people in the meat industry regarding myths about the industry as a whole. The reason for making this website was to, provide consumers and media with the other side of the story- a side that is often overlooked in media reports and on the internet. That statement is undoubtedly meant to affirm that the meat

Molina 7 industrys view/opinion on many topics is never heard and that this entire website was created as a response to accusations or untrue statements being made by the media. This discussion of antibiotics in the meat industry took me to so many different conversations. I learned the scientific aspect of what the antibiotics do to the meat, and then I explored the opinions surrounding this issue. Some of those opinions were simply stated in an article or a statement, while other opinions were transformed into videos and complete websites. These opinions in some cases even led to an attempt to get the FDA to further regulate these antibiotics in the meat industry. Overall I was surprised by the many different ways people go about sharing their opinions online. I feel as though this topic was definitely one that was worth pursuing because it is something that directly affects us as humans. This inquiry has made me question so much about what the FDA, American Meat Institute, and scientists do to investigate and maybe even change the way we use antibiotics in the meat industry. In future work, I would really like to continue investigating the many political movements that are surrounding this issue. Although I found a couple websites asking for signatures for a petition regarding the antibiotic overuse, I would like to dive in deeper and see what other political activists are saying on both sides of the issue. This issue is current and is something everyone should be educating themselves on. Because without the background knowledge of what has been going on, one will be unable to form an opinion. And without an opinion one will be unable to choose a side, and its important that everyone forms an opinion and fights for what they think should be done about this issue. Otherwise this issue will never be solved.

Molina 8 Works Cited

Booren, Betsy. "Statement of the American Meat Institute on New CDC Foodborne Illness Outbreak Analysis." American Meat Institute. American Meat Institute, 29 Jan. 2013. Web. 21 Feb. 2013. <http://www.meatami.com/ht/display/ReleaseDetails/i/84237>. French, Aaron. "The American Meat Institute Gets It Wrong on Antibiotic Resistant Superbugs." Home. SwitchBoard, 8 Feb. 2013. Web. 16 Feb. 2013. <http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/afrench/the_american_meat_institute_ge.html>. Knox, Richard. "How Using Antibiotics In Animal Feed Creates Superbugs." NPR. NPR, n.d. Web. 16 Feb. 2013. <http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/02/21/147190101/how-usingantibiotics-in-animal-feed-creates-superbugs>. Painter, John A., Robert M. Hoekstra, Tracy Ayers, Robert V. Tauxe, Christopher R. Braden, Frederick Angulo, and Patricia Griffin. "Attribution of Foodborne Illnesses, Hospitalizations, and Deaths to Food Commodities by Using Outbreak Data, United States, 1998 2008 - Vol. 19 No. 3 - March 2013 - Emerging Infectious Disease Journal - CDC." Attribution of Foodborne Illnesses, Hospitalizations, and Deaths to Food Commodities by Using Outbreak Data, United States, 1998 2008. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 29 Jan. 2013. Web. 17 Feb. 2013. <http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/19/3/11-1866_article.htm>. "Meat MythCrushers." Meat MythCrushers. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Feb. 2013. <http://www.meatmythcrushers.com/>. "Meat Without Drugs - Sign the Petition!" Meat Without Drugs. Meat without Drugs, n.d. Web. 17 Feb. 2013. <http://www.meatwithoutdrugs.org/>.

Molina 9 Philpott, Tom. ""The Meat Industry Now Consumes Four-Fifths of All Antibiotics"" Mother Jones. N.p., 8 Feb. 2013. Web. 9 Feb. 2013. <http://www.motherjones.com/tomphilpott/2013/02/meat-industry-still-gorging-antibiotics>. Rosenburg, Martha. "Antibiotics Causing Resistant Infections and Maybe Obesity and Allergies." Dissident Voice RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Feb. 2013. <http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/11/antibiotics-causing-resistant-infections-and-maybe-obesityand-allergies/>. Tavernise, Sabrina. "Farm Use of Antibiotics Defies Scrutiny." The New York Times. The New York Times, 04 Sept. 2012. Web. 21 Feb. 2013. <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/04/health/use-of-antibiotics-in-animals-raised-for-fooddefies-scrutiny.html?pagewanted=all>. Union of Concerned Scientists. "Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act." Union of Concerned Scientists. N.p., 24 Jan. 2013. Web. <http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/solutions/strengthen-healthy-farmpolicy/pamta.html>.