Previous studies have pointed to reckless use of antibiotics on farm animals as the reason for the surge in drug-resistant bacteria, which often wreak havoc in hospital settings and among people with compromised immune systems.
Scientists and health experts fear that that drug-resistant bacteria from farms are escaping via farmworkers or meat.
The major problem has been lack of data. Many farmers are reluctant to allow scientists access to their facilities, and farmworkers — many of whom, in the United States, are undocumented immigrants — are wary of anyone who might want to sample them.
Microbiologists are engaged in detective work, acquiring more data to prove their point beyond the shadow of a doubt.
The main effort now is on obtaining further data. The question is, how much more data does the government need to curtail the use of antibiotics on farm animals for anything other than to treat disease.
This farm practice is only one of many that are considered possibly harmful to human health, but that are allowed to continue for the sake of profit - in this case by farms and the pharmaceutical industry.
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has troubled hospitals around the world for more than four decades and infecting people outside of health-care settings since at least 1995.
Last year, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommended more restraint in the use of antibiotics in livestock, following the lead of regulatory authorities in other countries. But the meat and agricultural industries are fighting those restrictions.
STRUGGLING FARMERS SAY THEY HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO USE ANTIBIOTICS. IT MAKES PIGS GROW BIGGER.
Studies have found that certain antibiotics can increase pigs' growth rate by 2.5%, enough to make the difference for farmers between profit and loss. In the current US market, a farmer might get around US$1 per pound for a pig that costs about $0.94 per pound to produce.
Although farm owners do not always reveal the quantities or types of antibiotics they use, an analysis of FDA data by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future in Baltimore found that in 2009, some 13.1 million kilograms — 80% of the antibiotics sold in the United States that year — were used on farms.
In a 1976 study, Stuart Levy, a microbiologist at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, Massachusetts, found that when farmers started using tetracycline, the numbers of tetracycline-resistant bacteria on the farms spiked. Within months, resistance had spread to microbes in farmworkers' intestinal tracts. “You don't have to look that far to see resistant bacteria moving to the environment,” Levy says.
RELATED:
Medline Plus: Some farm workers harbor antibiotic-resistant bacteria, study finds - http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_138399.html
PBS FRONTLINE: Is your meat safe? -
New York Times: Tracing germs through supermarket aisles -
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Link to this post - http://ottersandsciencenews.blogspot.ca/2013/07/drug-resistant-bacteria-profit-versus.html
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