The Issues: Buy Local

What are Antibiotics?
Bacteria are everywhere, including on the skin and in the digestive system of humans. While bacteria are critical to normal bodily functions, some types can cause illness. In humans, antibiotics are used to treat health conditions caused by bacteria, including ear and skin infections, food poisoning, pneumonia, meningitis and other serious illnesses. Antibiotics are also used to treat or prevent infections that can complicate critical medical procedures including surgery, cancer therapy, and transplants.

Antibiotics belong to a category of drugs called "antimicrobials," and include penicillin, tetracycline, amoxicillin and many other formulations that can kill or inhibit the growth of bacteria without causing significant harm to the patient. Antibiotics were initially derived from natural compounds. Many organisms, including various types of fungi, produce substances that destroy bacteria and prevent infection. Penicillin, for example, is derived from mold. Today, there are hundreds of antibiotics in use, most of which are synthetically produced.

What are Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria?
Just as immunization helps the human body fight disease by exposing the body to small amounts of a virus or bacteria, when bacteria are continually exposed to small amounts of antibiotics they can develop immunity to them. Over time this leads to the development of new, stronger strains of bacteria, with the antibiotic immunity passed on to subsequent generations.

It's a case of "survival of the fittest," with the strongest bacteria, that are least susceptible to a specific antibiotic, living on, adapting and multiplying. These are called "resistant bacteria" because they have adapted to the point where antibiotics can no longer kill them. As a result, some antibiotics have lost their effectiveness against specific infectious diseases. For example, certain strains of tuberculosis are now resistant to antibiotics that were previously effective in fighting them.1

Another example is staphylococcus aureus, a bacteria that is the most common cause of staph infections, and that can cause pneumonia, meningitis, toxic shock, skin abscesses, heart valve infections and other serious and deadly medical conditions. In the United States, almost every strain of s. aureus is now resistant to the antibiotics oxacillin, penicillin and amoxicillin,2 and strains of the disease have begun developing resistance to newer drugs like methicillin and vancomycin.3 The threat of prolonged illness or death from an s. aureus infection has increased as it has become more resistant and fewer drugs are able to effectively control or eliminate it.

Antibiotic resistance has been accelerated by extreme overuse of antibiotics in humans and animals. Over-prescribing antibiotics for viral-caused conditions like the flu or common cold, against which antibiotics are useless, contributes to antibiotic resistance. As the American Academy of Pediatrics notes, "When antibiotics aren't used the right way, they can do more harm than good."4 For example, children who are given antibiotics for ear infections are more likely to get another ear infection, sooner, than those who are not prescribed these drugs. In recent years the academy has urged its members to drastically reduce the antibiotic prescriptions they write.5

Antibiotics and the Animal Industry
Industrial farms have been mixing antibiotics into livestock feed since 1946, when studies showed that the drugs cause animals to grow faster and put on weight more efficiently, increasing meat producers' profits.6 Today antibiotics are routinely fed to livestock, poultry, and fish on industrial farms to promote faster growth and to compensate for the unsanitary conditions in which they are raised.7

Modern industrial farms are ideal breeding grounds for germs and disease. Animals live in close confinement, often standing or laying in their own filth, and under constant stress that inhibits their immune systems and makes them more prone to infection. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, as much as 70 percent of all antibiotics used in the United States is fed to healthy farm animals.

When drug-resistant bacteria develop at industrial livestock facilities, they can reach the human population through food, the environment (i.e., water, soil, and air),8 or by direct contact with animals (i.e., farmers and farm workers).

Industrial livestock operations produce an enormous amount of concentrated animal waste—over one billion tons annually—that is often laden with antibiotics, as well as antibiotic-resistant bacteria from the animals' intestines. It is estimated that as much as 80 to 90 percent of all antibiotics given to animals are not fully digested and eventually pass through the body and enter the environment,9 where they can encounter new bacteria and create additional resistant strains.10 With huge quantities of manure routinely sprayed onto fields surrounding CAFOs, antibiotic resistant bacteria can leech into surface and ground water, contaminating drinking wells and endangering the health of people living close to large livestock facilities.

Antibiotic Resistance, Public Health and Public Policy
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria is a growing public health crisis because infections from resistant bacteria are increasingly difficult and expensive to treat. As of this writing, the U.S. Congress was considering legislation, staunchly opposed by industrial farm lobbyists, which would ban seven classes of antibiotics from use on factory farms and would restrict the use of other antibiotics. This is a response to the fact that modern industrial livestock operations threaten to increase the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

It has been estimated that at least 18,000 Americans die every year from drug-resistant infections.11 In addition, the National Academy of Sciences calculates that increased health care costs associated with antibiotic-resistant bacteria exceed $4 billion each year in the United States alone12—a figure that reflects the price of pharmaceuticals and longer hospital stays, but does not account for lost workdays, lost productivity or human suffering.13

Although everyone is at risk when antibiotics stop working, the threat is greatest for young children, the elderly, and people with weakened immune systems, including cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, organ transplant patients and, in general, people whose health is compromised in some way.14

Sustainable Alternatives
Ending the routine use of antibiotics in animal agriculture is not only critical, it is quite feasible. In fact, that is how livestock was raised for thousands of years, right up until the mid-20th Century. According to a study by the National Academy of Sciences, banning non-therapeutic use of antibiotics on livestock farms might increase the average consumer's food costs by between $4.85 and $9.72 a year, a small price to pay for the expected accompanying decrease in health care costs. The study also suggested that a ban would not affect the profits of farmers who use good management methods.15

Today, many small, sustainable farmers do not use antibiotics at all, in large part because they don't have to compensate for unhealthy conditions. On sustainable farms, animals are raised in a clean environment that promotes their health. Other sustainable farmers use antibiotics, but only to treat sick animals.

Federal standards prohibit antibiotic use in animals whose meat will be certified organic. In the Eat Well Guide, farms where antibiotics are never given to animals carry the label "no antibiotic use," while those where antibiotics are only used to treat a sick animal carry the label "no routine antibiotic use." In these instances, a suitable amount of time must pass after an animal is treated and before its meat, milk or eggs can enter the food supply.

What You Can Do

  • Avoid buying meat, milk or eggs from animals that were routinely fed antibiotics.
  • Find a source of sustainably-raised products close to home using the Eat Well Guide. Community Supported Agriculture programs, farmers' markets, food co-ops, and many health food stores sell sustainably-raised food.
  • Advocate for change. Consumers can help change food policy. Urge the government and industry to stop unnecessary antibiotic use in agriculture.
  • Don't take antibiotics unless you have a bacterial infection! Colds and other viral-based illness cannot be treated with antibiotics.

Did You Know?

  • One out of six cases of campylobacter infection, (the most common cause of bacterial food poisoning), is resistant to the antibiotic most often used to treat severe food poisoning.16
  • Today nearly all strains of staphylococcal (staph) infections in the United States are resistant to penicillin, and many are resistant to newer drugs.17
  • Non-therapeutic use of antibiotics has increased by about 50 percent since 1985.18

For More Information

  • Keep Antibiotics Working
    A coalition of concerned health, consumer, environmental and agricultural groups, working to reduce the overuse and misuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture.
  • Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics
    APUA works to improve antibiotic policy and clinical practice worldwide in order to control antibiotic resistance and strengthen society's defenses against infectious disease.
  • Union of Concerned Scientists Food and Environment Program
    UCS's Food and Environment Program project focuses on reducing the use of antibiotics in food animals, working in concert with environmental, public health, and other organizations.

Page last updated October 2009

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