CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Katie Couric's recent investigative story on "CBS Evening News" shined a light the growing problem of antibiotic resistance in medicine, a critical public health issue that is unknown to most Americans.
As the CBS news segment, which took Couric to Arkansas and Iowa, pointed out the overuse of antibiotics in livestock and poultry feed and water in confined animal feeding operations contributes significantly to antibiotic resistance.
Producers routinely feed antibiotics to pigs, cattle and chickens that are not sick, a practice that leads to the development of bacteria that are immune to antibiotics and undermines the effectiveness of these drugs in treating human diseases. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, the problem is dangerous and unnecessary: Modern agricultural systems can forgo nontherapeutic uses of antibiotics and still provide meat for U.S. consumers without sacrificing human or animal health.
A bill now gaining momentum in Congress would curtail the overuse of antibiotics in food animal production, protect animal health and ensure the effectiveness of a small number of lifesaving antibiotics. To date, 120 members of Congress have endorsed The Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act. Nearly 300 stakeholder groups, including the American Medical Association, also support the bill. Now is a good time to get informed on this topic.
UCS estimates that livestock and poultry production accounts for about 70 percent of the antibiotics used in the United States each year. CAFOs routinely feed such important human drugs as penicillin and tetracycline to pigs, cattle and chickens to promote growth and prevent diseases caused by overcrowded, stressful living conditions.
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When bacteria are routinely exposed to antibiotics, they develop resistance to them and become "superbugs" that can move from animals to humans through food, air and water. Treating a patient infected by a superbug with an ineffective drug can lead to a more serious illness, and if none of the available antibiotics work, resistance becomes a matter of life and death.
More Americans know someone or have personally dealt with a superbug that has put them in the hospital and required extensive rounds of high-powered medicine to fight it off. According to UCS, the bill in Congress would help prevent the emergence of such superbugs by reducing antibiotic use in animal agriculture.
Editor's Note: Robinson is press secretary for Cambridge, Mass.-based Union of Concerned Scientists.
