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Farm animals in India and China are becoming more resistant to antibiotics

nature.com

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Re: Farm animals in India and China are becoming more resistant to antibiotics

#51

Post by delfinom »

tdb7893 wrote: post #40
kryogen1c wrote: post #9

Source paper https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6459/eaaw1944.ful... >From 2000 to 2018, the proportion of antimicrobial compounds with resistance higher than 50% (P50) increased from 0.15 to 0.41 in chickens and from 0.13 to 0.34 in pigs and plateaued between 0.12 and 0.23 in cattle. >Globally, 73% of all antimicrobials sold on Earth are used in animals raised for food. Jeeeesus. It sure feels like humanity…

One small way consumers can help is to reduce animal consumption. As an industry it releases a decent amount of greenhouse gasses, it creates antibiotic resistance, and it uses a ton of land and water (many of the people burning the Amazon are cattle ranchers). It's also very closely tied to actual consumer demand so consumers can affect it pretty easily.

You say that but we are also creating huge monoculture corps susceptible to a single disease wiping them out long term. Skipping meat is only part of the problem. The real solution is there needs to be long term control of meat and agricultural production to avoid self-inflicted devastation of the food supply.

Re: Farm animals in India and China are becoming more resistant to antibiotics

#52

Post by jajag »

maxerickson wrote: post #14
kryogen1c wrote: post #9

Source paper https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6459/eaaw1944.ful... >From 2000 to 2018, the proportion of antimicrobial compounds with resistance higher than 50% (P50) increased from 0.15 to 0.41 in chickens and from 0.13 to 0.34 in pigs and plateaued between 0.12 and 0.23 in cattle. >Globally, 73% of all antimicrobials sold on Earth are used in animals raised for food. Jeeeesus. It sure feels like humanity…

Resistance to antibiotics would take us back to 1900, not to the brink of annihilation. My point isn't to dismiss the problem, just that it would mean things like surgery being much riskier, not massive die offs.

We had massive child mortality rates in 1900.

Re: Farm animals in India and China are becoming more resistant to antibiotics

#53

Post by tdb7893 »

delfinom wrote: post #51
tdb7893 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One small way consumers can help is to reduce animal consumption. As an industry it releases a decent amount of greenhouse gasses, it creates antibiotic resistance, and it uses a ton of land and water (many of the people burning the Amazon are cattle ranchers). It's also very closely tied to actual consumer demand so consumers can affect it pretty easily.

You say that but we are also creating huge monoculture corps susceptible to a single disease wiping them out long term. Skipping meat is only part of the problem. The real solution is there needs to be long term control of meat and agricultural production to avoid self-inflicted devastation of the food supply.

I never said skipping meat will fix everything, just that it's an easy thing that actual consumers can do to help. The monoculture problem exists but not really relevant at all to the problem I'm talking about seeing how I'm not even saying people should cut out meat completely and there are better ways to diversify the supply of food than to add meat (especially since large amounts of animals are fed off of a monoculture of feed grain).

Re: Farm animals in India and China are becoming more resistant to antibiotics

#54

Post by riffraff »

jajag wrote: post #52
maxerickson wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Resistance to antibiotics would take us back to 1900, not to the brink of annihilation. My point isn't to dismiss the problem, just that it would mean things like surgery being much riskier, not massive die offs.

We had massive child mortality rates in 1900.

We would still have access to a lot of modern medicine even if we had no antibiotics. In 1900 we had just started to use sanitation, had no vaccination, and had no clue how _a lot_ if diseases worked.

Re: Farm animals in India and China are becoming more resistant to antibiotics

#56

Post by drak0n1c »

If you're curious why antibiotics are seen as necessary by farmers - I found an insightful Quora answer about US practices:

"The antibiotic, not antibiotics, in question is monesin sodium, also known originally by the trade-name Rumensin. It is an anti-biotic in the truest sense- it changes the living conditions for gut flora of a ruminant animal in such a way as to promote the growth of bacteria that produce proprionic acid, and making it less favorable for other microorganisms such as those that cause coccidiosis or inefficient digestion that results in methane gas.

So yes, it's an ionophoric activity. It kills off some stomach bugs by changing the environment inside the cow, promotes others, and makes the animal healthier and more efficient as a result.

Yes, there are other antibiotics fed at times, as prophylactics against respiratory disease disease during severe weather or shipment, but it is illegal to sell animals containing residues, and those additives are expensive.

It's not a surreal concentration-camp factory-farm shoving pills into cows so they roid-rage and turn into bloated meat-sacks, it's a finely tuned process of optimizing cow health and efficiency to get the most out of inputs and the best results. Which in turn means more profit for the farmer. Strange as it may seem, when your livelihood comes from livestock, you put a lot of attention, science, and technology into making sure they are as healthy and happy as possible, so they make you the most money when sale time comes."

https://www.quora.com/How-do-antibiotics-cause-farm-animals-...

Re: Farm animals in India and China are becoming more resistant to antibiotics

#57

Post by saiya-jin »

pulisse wrote: post #22
maxerickson wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Resistance to antibiotics would take us back to 1900, not to the brink of annihilation. My point isn't to dismiss the problem, just that it would mean things like surgery being much riskier, not massive die offs.

> Resistance to antibiotics would take us back to 1900, not to the brink of annihilation. You can't assume that the virulence of bacteria with evolved antibiotic resistance will be like that of the strains that existed in 1900.

resistance to atb come and go, if there is no pressure to have defense then its abandoned over not so many generations

Re: Farm animals in India and China are becoming more resistant to antibiotics

#58

Post by Richard_East »

maxerickson wrote: post #14
kryogen1c wrote: post #9

Source paper https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6459/eaaw1944.ful... >From 2000 to 2018, the proportion of antimicrobial compounds with resistance higher than 50% (P50) increased from 0.15 to 0.41 in chickens and from 0.13 to 0.34 in pigs and plateaued between 0.12 and 0.23 in cattle. >Globally, 73% of all antimicrobials sold on Earth are used in animals raised for food. Jeeeesus. It sure feels like humanity…

Resistance to antibiotics would take us back to 1900, not to the brink of annihilation. My point isn't to dismiss the problem, just that it would mean things like surgery being much riskier, not massive die offs.

Population of the UK and Ireland 1900: 40m

Population of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh 1900: 295m

Population of the UK and Ireland 2019: 68m (+70%)

Population of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh 2019: 1,700m (+576%)

Re: Farm animals in India and China are becoming more resistant to antibiotics

#59

Post by hnarn »

drak0n1c wrote: post #56

If you're curious why antibiotics are seen as necessary by farmers - I found an insightful Quora answer about US practices: "The antibiotic, not antibiotics, in question is monesin sodium, also known originally by the trade-name Rumensin. It is an anti-biotic in the truest sense- it changes the living conditions for gut flora of a ruminant animal in such a way as to promote the growth of bacteria that produce proprio…

>Strange as it may seem, when your livelihood comes from livestock, you put a lot of attention, science, and technology into making sure they are as healthy and happy as possible, so they make you the most money when sale time comes.

This seems like such a huge conflation of terms -- of course there's a lot of attention, science and technology put into animal farming, because it's a huge industry. Making sure animals are healthy makes sense, because you can't sell animals that die before slaughter: but happy? Where did that come from? Since when does the happiness of animals factor in anywhere in the equation of industrial slaughter for meat?

I'm by no means a vegan, and neither am I overly skeptical of markets and their value, but please let's not fall for the siren song of pretending that the market has already made animals as happy as they can be, because "of course they are, because nothing else would make economical sense".

Abhorrent conditions for animals make economic sense: that's why they exist. And this doesn't even address the glaring point of the "game theory" aspect of antibiotics in animal farming.

Re: Farm animals in India and China are becoming more resistant to antibiotics

#60

Post by snarf21 »

wonderwonder wrote: post #10

"the four types of antimicrobial drug most commonly used in farm animals to help them gain weight — tetracyclines, sulfonamides, quinolones and penicillins — are also the ones with highest resistance rates." It never ceases to amaze me the decisions that we as a species make with full knowledge of the consequences that seem to be geared towards implementing wide spread disaster. We as a species have very much decided…

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” - Upton Sinclair

The Jungle is different now, more clean maybe but also more dangerous.

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