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But the antibiotic’s [colistin] widespread use as a growth promoter for poultry and pigs in Asia had – by this time – encouraged the evolution of resistant strains and these have now spread to humans....The position is summed up by Lance Price, an antibiotic researcher at George Washington University in Washington DC. “Superbugs are gaining strength because we continue to squander these precious medicines through overuse in human medicine and as cheap production tools in animal agriculture.”
The world is losing its antibiotics, as bacteria increasingly resist the drugs. Use of antibiotics in farming promotes the evolution of this resistance, but it has been unclear how countries should cut back on their use.
Today marks the third annual publication of the Chain Reaction report, a scorecard of the 25 largest fast food and fast casual restaurants’ use of meat and poultry raised without antibiotics....This is good news, since the use of antibiotics in agriculture is a massive human health issue. “The threat to public health from the overuse of antibiotics in food animals is real and growing,” says Dr.
Still, around 70% of medically important antibiotics–those that are needed to treat people–are used in farm animals, not humans, and their overuse in agriculture is one of the major reasons that antibiotics are becoming less effective, making it more likely that people can die from routine infections. By 2050, if business continues as usual, an estimated 10 million people could die every year from a drug-resistant disease. A new report explains how farms could fix their end of the problem.
