Antibiotics on the Farm

Why aren’t the farms that stuff their animals full of antibiotics equally worried about the ineffectiveness of these antibiotics within their line of work? Aren’t they cutting their own throats by not taking this problem seriously?

Just the facts here, please…not opinions that will serve no purpose other than to get this thread bumped. :frowning:

The farms you are asking about are using the antibiotics as non-specific growth promoters, not to prevent or cure specific infections. The mechanism of growth promotion is not clear and most likely happens through several parallel mechanisms. For example, modifying the animal’s microbiota while also minimizing infection. Because we don’t really know the mechanism, we can’t look for antibiotic resistance the way we can with bacterial infections and illnesses. The only way to assess resistance in this case is to lose the growth promotion effect. That isn’t happening, which suggests that there are enough parallel mechanisms to make loss of growth promotion (e.g. total antibiotic resistance) unlikely.

The cynical answer is that they will continue to make money while they can. If the bugs develop resistance, the animals just don’t grow as big as fast. They aren’t going to die.

The companies that use antibiotics do so, because they are effective at one time. However, overuse of antibiotics contributes to antibiotic-resistant strains, leading to an arms race of finding new microscopic weapons to defeat the pests. A similar scenario takes place in patients who do not follow the doctor’s orders completely, helping some antibiotic-resistant strains to survive, multiply, and thrive.