Why do we feed animals antibiotics?

Dr. Hurnik: “Antibiotics, or more specifically antimicrobial drugs, are prescription medications used to treat bacterial diseases in animals and people. If animals have a bacterial infection one of the ways to treat them is to mix it with their food to ensure it is consumed with minimal handling or stress. A licensed veterinarian may prescribe antimicrobial medications if needed for the health and welfare of the animals under their care.”

 How do we ensure that there is no antibiotic residue in our food?

Dr. Hurnik: “Drugs that are approved for use in food animals have been assessed by Health Canada for safety to the food consuming public. Part of that approval is a determination of how much time needs to pass for the drugs to be sufficiently eliminated from the animal so that the resulting food products are suitable for human consumption.”

 What are withdrawal periods?

Dr. Hurnik: “The amount of time that needs to pass from when a drug is given to an animal until it has adequately eliminated that drug and is fit for human consumption is called the withdrawal time.”

 How are withdrawal periods determined? What testing goes into ensuring safe food?

 Dr. Hurnik: “The withdrawal times are approved by Health Canada to ensure any residues of drugs in food products are below levels deemed to be safe for the consuming public.  Health Canada sets these maximum residue limits (MRLs) for drugs that are approved for use in food producing animals. At federally inspected meat processing establishments, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has a testing program to ensure there are no residues above the MRLs, if such residue is found during meat inspection, the meat is not approved for human consumption.”

What are the ways that the food system ensures withdrawal periods are enforced?

Dr. Hurnick: “Livestock producers are aware of withdrawal times because they are clearly written on the drug labels and on prescriptions provided by their veterinarian. Quality assurance programs provide training on the administration of medications to farm animals and they contain procedures that producers follow to make sure withdrawals times are respected when marketing their animals.”

Regulations in place, such as withdrawal periods from the time an animal is given an antibiotic until it is considered safe for consumption, help to enusre the safety of the food supply.

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Lab-grown meat is seen by some as a way to meet rising global demand for protein while addressing concerns with modern livestock and poultry production methods. There will be questions about whether synthetic meat is healthy and safe – is fake meat good for us? A poll found that consumers want cultured meat to be clearly labeled. The concept also prompts societal and ethical questions.

We sought social and ethical perspectives from three experts:

• Candace Croney, professor in the departments of Comparative Pathobiology and Animal Sciences and Director of the Center for Animal Welfare Science at Purdue University, is the primary author of a paper titled, “Engineering Approaches to Animal Welfare,” currently under review at the Journal of Agriculture and Environmental Ethics. One section of the study addresses the issue of using the tissue of live animals to produce a synthetic meat product.
• Gary Varner, a philosophy professor at Texas A&M University, lists animal welfare and environmental ethics as research interests.
• Raymond Anthony, philosophy professor at the University of Alaska Anchorage, has done research in the areas of environmental, food, animal and agricultural ethics.

What are the potential benefits of a synthetic meat product?

Dr. Croney: There is the idea that we could vastly mitigate any suffering that animals experience as a result of being raised for meat.  One thing to keep in mind is that we would still need live animals as progenitors of the tissue that would be used to culture meat. Their experiences, the conditions under which they are raised, handled and sampled for tissue biopsies, and their overall welfare needs would have to be addressed. But, significantly fewer animals would be needed and the thinking by proponents of the technology is that this would also result in a significant reduction in the environmental impacts of livestock production.

Dr. Varner: The main one is an improvement in animal welfare by removing sentient beings that are capable of suffering from the food system. People might also think that the process could potentially be made more cost-efficient and also avoid environmental impacts of contemporary meat systems. I don’t know if that’s realistic or not.

Dr. Anthony: The meat we consume and the way we farm it have been scrutinized more than ever in recent years. Synthetic meat production is potentially another way to create a sustainable food future. As we approach 2050, scientific and technological innovations such as precision farming and genetic engineering, and now synthetic meat production, are being tasked to feed the projected 9 billion people and to do so in ways that mitigate such issues as greenhouse gas emissions, overfishing and animal welfare concerns. We face an enormous challenge to produce more food and meet the projected future needs for animal protein using existing agricultural lands and current water and energy resources.

What are the societal and cultural implications?

Dr. Croney: Is growing meat in a laboratory socially acceptable to people? We don’t know that yet. People who lean toward “natural” products might have questions about growing meat in a laboratory instead of using more traditional practices. We know many people today are very sensitive about the technologies associated with food production – particularly anything that looks like genetic modification as people tend to be very risk averse. Will this technology be similarly worrisome to people? What information will be provided to the general public here and elsewhere in the world? When and by whom will that be offered so that people can make informed choices that align with their values and beliefs rather than feeling that technology is being foisted on them? To the extent that technology advances might make it difficult to economically and visually distinguish cultured meat from traditionally produced meat, will cultured meat products be labeled in such a manner as to facilitate consumer choice? If the products are nutritionally different or vary significantly in price, who will have access to them and how does this mitigate or worsen societal inequities?

What happens to rural communities and all the people who are directly or indirectly involved in animal agriculture? It’s a way of life that’s important to many people. Is it socially acceptable to do something that could disrupt or displace that way of life? As consumers have increasingly expressed a desire to know more about how food is produced and to feel connected to farming, will this type of meat production exacerbate existing tensions and areas of disconnect between those who produce food and those dependent on them as consumers?

Dr. Varner: Reduction in animal-based agriculture via synthetic meat, as well as through synthetic dairy products, reduces a traditional lifestyle and relationship with animals that pastoralists celebrate.

Dr. Anthony: I see three areas of concern:

1. Philosophically, how do synthetic meat production practices enhance our relationship to animals and the environment? Does “clean meat” production, which occurs in sterile laboratories, alienate us further from the natural world and strain human-animal relationships?
2. Sophisticated consumers and regulators want to know if they are getting what is being marketed by these companies. How start-up tech companies foraying into food production address trust and transparency as part of an accountable business model will be a central issue to watch.
3. The impact of synthetic meats on issues of justice, fairness and equity for all the stakeholders in the food chain (animal and the environment included) will also be of interest. For example, it will be important to understand just how the public perceives the extent to which this evolving technology will mitigate animal suffering and how new actors in the food system balance this ethical concern against other ethical expectations and risk considerations related to food norms and cultural practices about what is acceptable to do. Also, like any technological use, there will be tradeoffs. How will this technology, if it becomes a viable competitor to conventional production practices, impact farmers the world over who rely on animal protein production for their livelihoods, community and food security?

What is the feasibility of cultured meat – is the technology there yet?

Dr. Anthony: At the moment, there are only a handful of global start-ups working on high-tech meat alternatives. They include Memphis Meats, Hampton Creek, and Beyond Meat. Food safety concerns, accusations of manipulation and adulteration, labeling regulations, and the legacy of how GM foods were rolled out are among some of the hurdles that must be addressed and surpassed.

Dr. Varner: I don’t know how close the proponents of this technology are to being able to scale this up to commercial levels.

Dr. Croney: There has been proof of concept. Tissue-cultured meat has actually been produced and there have been “tastings.” What is not known is whether it can be produced in a way that meets consumer expectations of what meat should look like and how it tastes. The logistics of doing it on a large scale and affordably has not been demonstrated yet.

Do you think laboratory meat production is realistic?

Dr. Croney: There’s a lot of promise. In terms of doing it on a large-scale basis at this point in time, I’m not sure. The economics need to be fundamentally addressed and who would invest in it? Do I see this realistically happening in the next 20 years? No, but we will see efforts to improve the technology and I think there could be benefit from that.

How would you summarize this issue?

Dr. Anthony: Beyond issues of taste, safety, healthfulness and cost, consumers are increasingly interested in flexing their citizenship muscles to co-shape a global sustainable food future. Public attitudes toward the ethical acceptability of synthetic meats will depend heavily on the extent to which the potential of this innovation can live up to the marketing hype and the technology and its applications do not result in worse-off outcomes for people, the planet and animals. When framing questions about the morality of synthetic meats, empirical studies gauging public concern and expectations will be key. Fundamentally, will this technological innovation enhance human-animal-environmental relationships or harm them? Will there be an improvement over conventional practices?

Dr. Croney: We know that global demand for meat is increasing as income levels rise in developing countries. Tissue-grown meat has the potential to help satisfy demand while addressing environmental concerns associated with the additional land and natural resources that would be required to increase conventional livestock production. In short, the base technology needed to produce laboratory meat is there and appears promising, but the logistics and economics of doing it on a large scale while meeting consumer expectations for taste, naturalness, and healthfulness need to be better understood.

Dr. Varner: One thing that isn’t raised by your questions is that as sentient animals are removed from the meat sector then, other things equal, there are fewer animals living on earth. And, if the lives of the animals that are not living would have been good, there is less aggregate happiness in the world.

Lab-grown meat produced from tissues is being researched and tested, but there are still many questions to be answered, including if consumers will accept the new product.

Originally published August 23, 2017.

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A recent article in the Huffington Post asked, “Are We Feeding a Health Crisis and Squandering the Cure?” In the article, the author, Laurie David – an environmentalist and producer and author of The Family Dinner: Great Ways to Connect with Your Kids, One Meal at a Time – states:

• Eighty percent of antibiotics go to food animals and much of them are used to make animals grow faster, not to treat them for infections.
• Today’s farmers are using antibiotics to compensate for crowded, unclean living conditions.
• Some scientists claim the misuse of antibiotics in food animals is a major contributor to global antibiotic resistance.
• The World Health Organization says we are headed into a “post-antibiotic era in which many common infections will no longer have a cure.”

Given the importance of this topic, we wanted to learn more. So we contacted Dr. Scott Hurd, former USDA deputy undersecretary for food safety and a veterinary professor at Iowa State University, for his thoughts.

On the subject of antibiotic use in food production, Dr. Scott Hurd provided these conclusions:

• Antibiotic resistance is a legitimate concern but studies do not back up the contention that antibiotic use in food animal production contributes to human health risk.
• We do not have strong data on human use to compare but it appears that possibly 75% of antibiotics are used in animals. However, only 13% are used for reasons other than the treatment of infections.
• It is not true that antibiotics are used to compensate for unclean conditions on today’s farms. The assumption is that if we went back to the way grandpa raised animals, we would not have a problem. Antibiotics were created for that time period and plenty of them were used back then.
• Antibiotics have been used on the farm for 50 or 60 years and they are still useful for the purposes they were created. This shows we have not created so-called “superbugs” on the farm.
• If we restrict the use of antibiotics on the farm, do we create the risk of unhealthy animals coming into the food supply? We have to be careful to not cause unintended consequences.
• Regarding the claim from the director-general of the World Health Organization: while it is possible that certain pathogens will require antibiotics that we currently don’t have, such a broad generalization across all antibiotics and all bacterial types borders on scare-mongering.

In Summary:

Although in total, animals use significantly more antibiotics than humans, that amount may not be excessive given that it is used to produce 135 billion pounds of nutritious and wholesome meat products. Animal agriculture recognizes that antibiotic resistance is a serious public health issue.  Everybody involved in raising animals needs to take responsibility for their role. As scientists studying antibiotic use in food animals have seen, this is being done by establishing and following appropriate responsible use protocols.

Dr. Hurd concluded that if the responsible use of antibiotics is limited, it will result in food animal production having a greater environmental impact, reduced productivity, diminished animal health, and potentially higher food prices.

What are your thoughts? Do you think about or buy your meat based on whether antibiotics were used?

We would like to extend our sincere condolences to the family and friends of Dr. Scott Hurd, who passed away on Thursday, March 27, 2014.

_{Image: “Tim, Bella and Amy” by Steve Bates is licensed under CC BY 2.0.}

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Small and large farms present different challenges, but both require skilled and conscientious management to promote good animal care. While there are fewer animals on a small operation, time spent caring for the animals must be juggled with various tasks. On larger operations, employees are often trained in specialized skills and a larger staff might allow for more personalized animal care.

The reason farms have gotten larger has more to do with maintaining income levels than increasing profits. One study provides this example: In the 1970s an operation producing 2,000 pigs a year would generate a profit of $42,000. In the 1990s the profit from such a farm would have been about $8,000. Taking inflation into account, the size of the farm would have to be roughly ten times larger in the 1990s to result in a similar income.

True or Not? “The well-being of farm animals on larger operations is disregarded in the pursuit of higher profits.”

_{“Crowded” by Dirk Heine is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.}

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