Flagstaff lab looks into antibiotics in livestock

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — Researchers in Flagstaff are looking at what happens when farmers routinely feed antibiotics to the beef, chicken, pork, turkey, shrimp and salmon you might find at the local grocery store.

They're buying meat and seafood from grocery stores here and in Los Angeles, Florida, Chicago, and the District of Columbia, to investigate what kinds of bacteria live on it.

If past testing for different bacteria is any indication, they could find some ugly stuff: Antibiotic-resistant bacteria capable of infecting you by kitchen cross-contamination, even if you're a vegetarian living with omnivores.

"We think that it is contributing significantly to the antibiotic resistance problem in people," said Lance B. Price, a biologist and director of a Translational Genomics (TGen) North unit that does research bearing on human health and the organisms living on us.

Animals in many commercial feeding operations in the United States — Europe, including the world's top pork producer, Denmark, has banned the practice — feed their animals antibiotics routinely when they are well, sometimes mixed with food, to help them grow faster and remain healthy in crowded conditions.

"In industrial food animal production, one of their standard tools is to use antibiotics," Price said.

The low doses of antibiotics over time kills less-resistant gut bacteria in the animals, leaving a tougher strain of antibiotic-resistant bacteria to reproduce. Problem is, the antibiotic-resistant bacteria from the uncooked meat in the United States has the potential to eventually enter a human body when picked up off an unclean countertop or cutting board, Price said. But some of the more inexpensive and widely used antibiotics are useless if you need them to fight an infection.

This has been the case for vegetarians, some of whom have had antibiotic-resistant E. coli later traced to chickens, Price said, and for poultry workers.

One analysis put the cost of fighting antibiotic-resistant bacteria, including antibiotic-resistant staph (MRSA), at $4-5 billion annually in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that of the 90,000 who die annually in the nation<s hospitals due to bacterial infections, 70 percent have infections that are resistant to at least one antibiotic.

The CDC has called the increasing ineffectiveness of antibiotics a top concern.

"Because of our profligate use of antibiotics in the animal food system, we're creating a huge public health nightmare for ourselves," said Margaret Mellon, director of the food and environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Added Mellon: "The impacts of antibiotic resistance on our health system are just enormous."

The strains of some bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics are more virulent, leading to sicker patients hospitalized longer for such things as E. coli or salmonella.

Physicians also share the blame, for overprescribing antibiotics to patients in cases where they won't be helpful, Mellon said.

The use of antibiotics in healthy animals for food production has drawn the attention of the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the American Medical Association, and lately, Capitol Hill, in the form of a bill to limit antibiotic use in livestock.

Price has testified on behalf of that bill, saying that any animal farming operation that relies on antibiotics daily to keep animals healthy needs to reconsider its practices.

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Information from: Arizona Daily Sun, http://www.azdailysun.com/