Antibiotics in Animals Tied to Risk of Human Infection

Article written by  SABRINA TAVERNISE

Published: January 27, 2014

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/28/science/antibiotics-in-animals-tied-to-risk-of-human-infection.html?_r=0

Summary:

    A federal analysis of 30 antibiotics used in animal feed said that most of them largely contributed to the problem of having antibiotic resistant bacteria infecting people. This analysis was conducted by the Food and Drug Administration. Some of the scientists from the Food Drug Administration studied 30 penicillin and tetracycline additives in animal feed. These scientists found that 18 of these animal feeds pose a high risk of exposing people to antibiotic resistant bacteria through food. The other 12 animal feeds did not have enough data to judge those animal feeds. Feeding animals with antibiotics is becoming a big problem as 2 million Americans fall sick and 23,000 die from antibiotic resistant bacteria every year.

    Scientists believe that this bacteria problem is caused by farmers. The farmers feed the animals small amounts of antibiotics and keep them in crowded conditions. This causes the bacteria's resistance, which will then affect humans as they eat the meat. Thus, the FDA tried to control the amount of antibiotics used to raise the animals since the 1970's. Recently, the FDA has taken action and banned the use of several antibiotics to raise animals. Last year, the FDA is trying to discriminate the use of antibiotics on all animals. For example, they banned the use of cephalosporins in animals. Cephalosporins are used to treat pneumonia and strep throat in people. The FDA believes that its current strategy of not using antibiotics to raise animals is the most efficient and effective way to change the use of these products in animal agriculture.

Relevance:

This article is relevant to the studies in class because this article discusses how bacteria become antibiotic resistant and its hazards. In Chapter 16, we learned about how antibiotics are effective against bacteria. However, an overuse of the antibiotic, such as constantly feeding animals with it, can lead to mutations in the bacteria that enables it to become resistant towards antibiotics. This is hazardous since a person infected with that certain type of bacteria will have a hard time recovering since the antibiotics would be ineffective.