<http://www.nytimes.com/>  <http://www.nytimes.com/> The New York Times
<http://www.nytimes.com/> 

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/opinion/18tue3.html?ex=1190779200
<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/opinion/18tue3.html?ex=1190779200&en=cdca
9215ce8bd5d2&ei=5070&emc=eta1> &en=cdca9215ce8bd5d2&ei=5070&emc=eta1 

 

September 18, 2007

Editorial


Antibiotic Runoff 


One of the persistent problems of industrial agriculture is the
inappropriate use of antibiotics. It's one thing to give antibiotics to
individual animals, case by case, the way we treat humans. But it's a common
practice in the confinement hog industry to give antibiotics to the whole
herd, to enhance growth and to fight off the risk of disease, which is
increased by keeping so many animals in such close quarters. This is an
ideal way to create organisms resistant to the drugs. That poses a risk to
us all.

A recent study by the University of Illinois makes the risk even more
apparent. Studying the groundwater around two confinement hog farms,
scientists have identified the presence of several transferable genes that
confer antibiotic resistance, specifically to tetracycline. There is the
very real chance that in such a rich bacterial soup these genes might move
from organism to organism, carrying the ability to resist tetracycline with
them. And because the resistant genes were found in groundwater, they are
already at large in the environment.

There are two interdependent solutions to this problem, and hog producers
should embrace them both. The first solution - the least likely to be
acceptable in the hog industry - is to ban the wholesale, herdwide use of
antibiotics. The second solution is to continue to tighten the regulations
and the monitoring of manure containment systems. The trouble, of course, is
that there is no such thing as perfect containment. 

The consumer has the choice to buy pork that doesn't come from factory
farms. The justification for that kind of farming has always been
efficiency, and yet, as so often happens in agriculture, the argument breaks
down once you look at all the side effects. The trouble with factory farms
is that they are raising more than pigs. They are raising drug-resistant
bugs as well. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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