Education, consumer advocacy and lifting the veil from the practices of industrialized agriculture are transforming shopping habits. Despite industry efforts, concern for farm animal welfare is gaining significant strength. The study finds that the importance of animals being humanely raised is exceeded only by food safety concerns, and animal welfare scores well above “natural” and “organically produced.” Consumers who have grown up more aware of how food is produced are intensifying the demand for meat, dairy and eggs from humanely raised animals: Forty-four percent of shoppers aged 20 to 34 always look for cage-free eggs.

Americans are also turning to labels like Animal Welfare Approved to help them make purchasing decisions; the report finds that ethical claims help consumers identify high quality, safe and humane foods. When credible and relevant, ethical claims also help consumers form deeper emotional connections with brands. Overall, 58 percent of shoppers are more willing to take the time to learn about ethically produced food brands while 44 percent stopped buying a product when the company producing it acted in an unethical way. Forty-two percent are more loyal to more ethically produced food brands.

The report only tells us what we have seen on the ground for a long time— more and more people care about what they eat and they aren’t willing to compromise. AWA believes that informed consumers are our best allies and we are committed to remaining a label that consumers can trust. Check our database to find meat, dairy and eggs that live up your expectations of being good for animals, people and the planet.

The article is one of an increasing number of investigative pieces which have highlighted the massive pollution problems caused by intensive livestock farming systems – and the fact that we, as taxpayers, are the ones who are currently picking up the bill.

Farming today
Ask the average man or woman in the street to describe a modern farm and it is pretty likely that you’ll still get a rose-tinted description of a traditional family farm, as it was some time ago. Many people still have no idea how the vast majority of their food is produced today. And big farming business wants to keep it that way, believe me.

Before the industrialization of our farming systems in the 1940s-50s, U.S. farming mainly consisted of small family farms working in relative harmony with their surrounding environment. In the spring and summer months, farmers would grow crops and grass to feed their families and livestock, selling the excess to local communities and businesses. The crops would take up nutrients from the soil, which would be utilized by the livestock to produce milk, eggs or meat for human consumption. Over the winter months, the animals would be housed in barns with straw bedding and fed hay. In the spring, the farmers would clear out the straw bedding – now thoroughly mixed with manure – and spread it on the land, thereby returning some of the nutrients that the cattle had consumed back to the soil for the following season’s crops and pasture.

Sustainable family farms do still exist. And, thanks to mounting consumer interest in how food is produced, their number is growing. Animal Welfare Approved farmers across the U.S. seek to work in balance with their environment. They grow grass to feed their livestock, returning manure back to the land. It’s called the natural nutrient cycle.

Spread manure on healthy pastures at the right levels and the worms and micro-organisms that live in the soil will quickly break it down into a more stable form of nutrients, readily available to growing plants. This is a natural process, one that has happened since time immemorial. It’s what the soil critters are designed to do.

Problems with the system
The system described works amazingly well. However, spread too much manure and things quickly start to get out of hand. The soil life cannot cope and the manure is no longer absorbed into the soil. Instead, it sits on the surface, creating increasingly toxic conditions for the friendly soil critters below. Exposed to the weather, the soluble nutrients in the manure – particularly nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous – start to leech away, finding their way into streams and waterways. And this is exactly what is happening on intensive livestock units across the U.S. on a truly massive scale.

The trouble is that these industrial farming units aren’t designed to work with Mother Nature. Gone is the concept of the “natural nutrient cycle”—instead, these industrial units, with their tens of thousands of housed pigs or cattle, or hundreds of thousands of chickens, are now producing so much waste manure that they simply don’t know what to do with it. It’s happening on a scale that is almost impossible to comprehend. And we are all paying for it.

According to the National Hog Farmer’s latest State of the Industry Report, over 116 million hogs were slaughtered in the U.S. last year. But even this figure is dwarfed by the total number of chickens raised for meat and egg production: in 2007, U.S. farmers produced 8.9 billion broiler chickens, while the national flock produced over 90 billion eggs.

Smithfield–the world’s largest pork processor–slaughtered and processed over 27 million pigs in 2005 in the U.S. alone. The Washington Post article reports that livestock produce three times more excrement than humans, so just one of Smithfield’s 500,000 pig units will produce more excrement than the 1.5 million humans living in Manhattan. And we are now learning that the way this manure is stored and managed is having a profound effect on the environment.

Most factory farms collect their waste manure in huge nearby open tanks or cesspools. Some of these lagoons are as big as several football fields, each holding hundreds of thousands–if not millions–of gallons of putrefying manure. Being exposed to the elements, they emit toxic gases such as ammonia and hydrogen sulfide, as well as methane, a key greenhouse gas.

As the waste is expensive to store–and even more expensive to transport–some industrial systems periodically pump the waste out of the lagoons and spray it on the surrounding fields. The problem is that it is often sprayed at such high rates–or at such frequencies–that the soil and plants cannot even begin absorb it.

This “over-application” leads to run-off, where the water-soluble nutrients find their way into our waterways and groundwater systems in vast quantities, polluting our drinking water and rivers, leaving our waterways dead–and directly contributing to the 230 recognized oxygen-deprived dead zones along the U.S. coast.

For various reasons, the regulatory system just hasn’t been able to keep up. The industrial farming lobby is very quick to pull out the “financial threat to the family farm” card and run cap in hand to the government whenever they come under pressure to adopt more environmentally friendly techniques. Yet it is clear that most farming today is about as far from the traditional family farm as you can get.

Who’s paying?
With all this fresh in your mind it might infuriate you to hear that the factory farms aren’t the only ones who are paying to clear up the mess. In fact, taxpayers are contributing significant sums of money, too.

For example, Maryland Department of Agriculture’s manure transport program is a government-funded service for intensive livestock farmers. Under the program, “farmers who have inadequate cropland to fully utilize their manure may apply for grants to transport excess waste to other farms or alternative use facilities that can use the product safely.” So although the factory farming system is effectively designed to fail when it comes to its own waste management, the taxpayer is still expected to help subsidize the disposal of waste manure. Go figure…

So what is the industry doing?
One green solution put forward by the intensive poultry industry is to convert the excess waste manure into fertilizer pellets for sale to homeowners. In 2001, Perdue Farms, one of the leading poultry processors in the US, opened the Perdue AgriRecycle plant in Blades, Delaware, after environmental regulations around the Chesapeake Bay were tightened when research showed that phosphorus in agricultural runoff was polluting the waters of the Bay.

This development sounds like a good idea until you find out that this plant–the largest in the region–handles less than 10% of the poultry manure on the Delmarva Peninsula alone.

So why don’t Perdue and other companies just build more plants to deal with the waste problem they have created? Well, the fact is that Perdue isn’t planning on building any further facilities in the very near future because people just aren’t buying the pelleted manure fertilizer. In addition, there is no more taxpayer money available to help pay for the construction. (The kind taxpayers of Delaware contributed a significant portion of the cost to help build Perdue’s flagship manure processing plant.)

Ok, so you might argue that I’m being a little harsh on these multi-million dollar companies and their failure so far to take any real responsibility for the mess they are making of this planet. In a world of diminishing oil reserves and the threat of climate change, you could argue that it is important to see farming move towards better use of its wastes. But while some might regard such poultry manure processing facilities as a step in the right direction, the reality is that it’s a bit like using Scotch tape to patch a crack in a dam.

The fact is that when your farming system involves feeding huge quantities of feed to massive concentrations of animals in a very small area, it’s pretty obvious that you’re going to get a massive output of manure as well as huge animal welfare issues–and all of the other problems associated with factory farming that I’ve mentioned many times before.

My question is this: why are we spending millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money to help prop up an unsustainable factory farming industry? We shouldn’t be spending more taxpayers’ money to help these factory farms to dispose of the billions of gallons of putrefying waste manure they are producing each year. Instead, we should be looking at ways of getting rid of the centralized, industrial farming systems which produce it in the first place, and helping the remaining family farms to adopt truly sustainable farming practices.

Photo courtesy of Reclaiming Food & Farming.

This is especially dangerous for organic farmers, who have no defenses against their organic alfalfa becoming contaminated with Monsanto’s GE seed. It could cost them their organic certification.  It could cost you control over what you eat if contamination decimates organic supplies.

But you still have a say. The USDA must accept comments about the ruling through Wednesday, March 3. A number of organizations will help you make your voice heard, including Food Democracy Now,  Credo Action and the True Food Network . You can also email your comments to the USDA directly.

Monsanto thinks might makes right—but together we can prove otherwise.

For more information, see Naomi Starkman’s Huffington Post piece.

While there are some true wild boars in the U.S., most feral hogs are descendants of escaped domestic pigs that have reverted to a wild state. Feral hogs are therefore not a true native wild animal and many states regard them as an invasive species. Feral hogs breed rapidly and are capable of thriving in a wide range of environments – their numbers and the area they cover in the U.S. are both increasing. This is not helped by the widespread practice of hunters who are smuggling live trapped feral hogs from state to state and releasing them on hunting ranches.

Feral hogs cause all sorts of problems. They can destroy native plants and damage woodland and wetland areas. They compete with native livestock for food and other resources and,  as omnivores, they will eat eggs and insects if they find them, as well as scavenging dead animals they find. They will also kill and eat young or injured animals – either farmed or wild.

In addition to potential for environmental damage, feral hogs also cause concern because they can carry serious diseases that can be transmitted to other farmed livestock – and humans. Some studies show that up to 20% of all feral hogs are infected with brucellosis, a disease that causes abortion and infertility in other pigs and gives humans severe flu-like symptoms. Feral hogs may also spread the pseudorabies virus (PRV) and a range of parasites that could cause significant economic problems for commercial pig farmers.

Animal Welfare Approved applauds the efforts of North Carolina to come to grips with the issue and we are proud to be participating in the North Carolina Feral Swine Study Committee. This group is comprised of 14 stakeholder groups and was formed to discuss the growing concerns about feral swine in the state. The aim of the Study Committee is to work on solutions to the problem of feral hogs that already live in the state, as well as those that are imported.

Experience of the problem in other states tells us that there is no single answer to controlling the feral hog problem in North Carolina. Instead, we are going to need a range of different options involving cooperation between farmers, hunters, wildlife services and others. The study group’s discussions are at an early stage and so far include options to exclude feral hogs from commercial hog operations – for example, using electrified fencing, health testing pigs before they are moved from place to place, and restrictions on importing feral hogs from outside the state or releasing those that are trapped.

As a group, we need to work together to find solutions that will help all farmers – regardless of whether they are large or small, pasture-based or intensive. We also need to ensure that any solutions put forward are not too costly, that they are achievable and, above all, effective. Animal Welfare Approved looks forward to our continued work in this forum – we’ll keep you posted on our progress.

Evidently, at least two more years because in that time there’s been no movement to address the fundamental cause of contamination in the U.S. meat supply: feedlot production.

And I’m worried for our children’s health and lives.

It was two years ago today that the U.S. saw its largest meat recall in history, prompting Harkin’s outrage.  The USDA recalled 143 million pounds of beef distributed by Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Company and said that the meat had been used in school lunches and food assistance programs.

On January 18 of this year, Huntington Meat Packing Inc. of Montebello, CA recalled 864,000 lbs of beef because it may have been contaminated with E. coli O157:H7. This past weekend the recall was expanded to more than 5 million lbs of meat. Some of the products made from this meat appear to have been distributed through the USDA National School Lunch Program.

Happy anniversary of the Hallmark recall, America! You were expecting flowers?

E. coli O157:H7 is a bacterium that can cause severe illness, especially in the very young, seniors, or persons with weakened or compromised immune systems. The shattering effects of E. coli O157:H7 were detailed in an October 3, 2009 New York Times article, E. coli Path Show Flaws in Beef Inspection.

The recent recall of 5 million pounds may seem like a drop in the bucket compared with the 143 million pounds recalled two years ago, but when it comes to the health and lives of our children, I must implore, “When is enough, enough? Why are we poisoning our children?”

I applaud any efforts the USDA and other government agencies are making to strengthen the safety of our food system, but to quote an old saying, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Food safety regulations seem to be focused on throwing pounds of cure at the problem; cures that time and time again don’t work, sometimes make things worse, and leave our families vulnerable to contamination and illness. We feed our farm animals antibiotics, we irradiate meat, we require more testing and increased regulations at processing plants and still meat is recalled.

Therein lies the problem—the government is stubbornly dedicated to, as former FDA Commissioner Dr. David Kessler put it, “chasing the horse after it’s out of the barn,” while study after study piles up providing evidence that the most effective way to stop the spread of dangerous E. coli contamination starts—and ends— with keeping cattle on pasture and out of feedlots. It’s an issue we’ve regularly covered in the AWA blog, where a click on the food safety link brings up 35 entries. But it bears repeating and I’ll keep at it until government can see its way clear from corporate interests to effect real change in the name of food safety.

Unfortunately, until the country is truly ready to address food safety issues, the primary defense you have against E. coli is your own common sense.

In the meantime, what can you do to keep your children and loved ones as safe as possible? AWA has a few suggestions:

• Every time there’s a recall contact your school district and make sure they are not using those products.
• Ask your school district’s food director to only source from suppliers operating a test-and-hold procedure.

• If you have a parent or other loved one in a hospital or nursing facility that uses a food service company, call them as well, and make sure recalled items aren’t on their menus.

• Follow safe food handling guidelines.

• Check in with your doctor even if you think it’s just the stomach flu. Stomach flu and food poisoning often mimic each other but the only way to discover and trace food poisoning is to know who’s sick to begin with.

• Most importantly, when possible, purchase only pastured meat, dairy and eggs from AWA farmers. Redirecting your food budget to safer, more humane meat, dairy and eggs is the surest way to keep your food and your family safe.

The key message is that there is no doubt about the direct links between the overuse of antibiotics in intensive farming and the rise of bacteria that are resistant to common antibiotics. The major culprit at the moment is Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus – more commonly known as MRSA.

What happened?

So what’s the problem with MRSA and how has it developed? There are many different MRSA strains but, as the name suggests, all MRSA bacteria are resistant to certain important antibiotics. The effect of this is that if you are infected with MRSA it is much more difficult for your doctor to find an antibiotic that will help you. Some estimates put the number of Americans suffering from MRSA infections at 90,000 per year – leading to nearly 20,000 deaths. As you can see, this is a serious problem.

So how has MRSA developed?  Staphylococcus aureus is a very common bacteria in humans, often found on the skin, in the nose, or in the mouth. But how did it get to be so deadly? To understand that we have to look at what has been going on in some of the largest and most intensive farms in the U.S. since the 1950s.

As farming became more intensive and animals were kept in ever greater numbers, farmers inevitably found that pests and diseases began to spread more easily. In effect, the intensive system made the animals sick. When animals are sick they don’t grow as fast – and may even die. But rather than changing the system to one that was better for the animals, the industry realized that it could “solve” the problem more inexpensively by routinely adding low doses of antibiotics to the animals’ feed and water. This medication worked very well at keeping the animals alive and growing. However, as more and more bacteria were being exposed to antibiotics – especially at low doses – the risk that they might develop resistance also grew.

Scientists have known for many years that bacteria can mutate to become resistant to antibiotics or pick up genetic material from other bacteria that have survived the antibiotic use, and then further spread this within the bacterial population. And this is exactly what has been happening on intensive farms across the U.S. over the last few decades.

Part of the problem with this overuse of low-dose antibiotics is the fact that while the low dose kills off the more susceptible bacteria first, it leaves behind those bacteria that aren’t susceptible – in other words, the ones that show resistance. And because the farmers generally use the same antibiotics over and over again, in the end the only bacteria left are those that are resistant. Without anything to control them, these resistant bacteria can multiply and easily spread from animal to animal, and then from farm to farm.

However, the real problems occur when antibiotic resistance spreads to bacteria that can make humans sick. This is why we are now seeing the emergence of antibiotic resistant diseases like MRSA in humans – and we are fast running out of options to treat these new diseases.

But it’s not too late!

Let’s make one thing clear: we don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater and ban all antibiotics in animal agriculture. Antibiotics are a vital weapon against serious diseases in both animals and humans, and we know that the treatment of individual sick animals does not contribute to the rise of resistant bacteria, such as MRSA. We’ve know this for almost as long as antibiotics have been used as “growth promoters” in agriculture. As early as 1948, the British journal the Veterinary Record reported concerns about the potential development of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria:

The present enormous consumption of the drug (penicillin) can be accounted for only by a good deal of indiscriminate use and it is generally considered that widespread use particularly of inadequate doses is a potent factor in breeding resistant strains of bacteria.

The good news is that countries like Denmark that have recently banned the indiscriminate use of antibiotics for growth promotion and other non-therapeutic reasons are now reporting a sharp fall in the incidence of resistant bacteria. So it’s not too late! We can do something about not just stopping the development of new strains of resistant bacteria, but also reducing the incidence of the ones that are already out there.

The key to stopping all non-therapeutic use of antibiotics – and reducing the need for therapeutic doses – is not to blindly carry on with farming systems in which we are simply trying to prevent exposure to disease. What we need to do is to encourage farming systems in which we are actively managing animals so they can develop strong natural immune systems – a concept sometimes called “positive health. “

I’m sure it won’t surprise you to know that the kind of farms we are talking about are the kind of farms that are Animal Welfare Approved. Research shows that animals that are under stress have reduced immunity. And if animals are kept on farms where they are not overcrowded, where they have access to pasture and space to move around, where they are fed a diet that matches their natural needs, and where they are managed to promote health and well-being, then the levels of stress and the incidence of disease – and the need for antibiotics – is much, much lower. In many cases AWA farmers cannot recall the last time they had to use antibiotics. It is that simple.

Making the right choice

The CBS report ended by saying that if consumers want to make sure that they don’t buy products with a risk of MRSA, then they should look for meat which is labeled “no antibiotics ever.”  But while this seems like a straightforward way to ensure that consumers  aren’t at risk, I am afraid it isn’t quite as simple as that.

The MRSA found on meat gets there during the slaughter and butchery process. As mentioned above, MRSA normally lives on the skin, so an animal that carries MRSA doesn’t automatically have the bug in its meat – but the bug could be transferred to the meat during processing. The problem is that the slaughterplant worker or butcher could then transfer it to any other meat they touch. So while it may be true that meat from animals reared without the use of antibiotics might have a lower risk of carrying MRSA, just saying “I’ll buy meat from animals raised without antibiotics” doesn’t actually do anything to help solve the problem.

The solution lies in looking at the causes of MRSA – intensive farming that relies on excessive amounts of low-dose antibiotics – and putting a stop to the continued non-therapeutic use of these vital medicines on which these farming systems are so dependent.

Just like guns, antibiotics themselves are not the problem. The irresponsible use of antibiotics is the problem. And it’s not the farmers that are at fault; it is the farming systems which result in the need for indiscriminate antibiotic use.

Of course, the underlying principle here arguably has its roots in basic human biology: the more germs we are exposed to when we are younger, the stronger our immune systems are in later life. And this very same principle extends to the way many of us choose to farm.

Animal Welfare Approved farmers know that allowing animals to behave naturally and providing them with a low-stress environment helps to maintain their natural immune systems–their so-called “positive health.” And by working with nature, and not against her, we know that exposing stock to low levels of disease or internal parasite challenges in their early lives–as opposed to routinely using non-therapeutic medicines–will help to produce robust animals with vigor and resilience who only need veterinary treatments for disease or injury.

Over the last decade or two, however, this commonsense principle has been largely swept aside at both the home and the farm, as our ongoing war against Mother Nature entered a new “biological” phase. With the seemingly endless supply of powerful medicines and plentiful sanitation products, our healthy respect for the unseen bacteria around us rapidly developed into an obsession with hygiene and cleanliness at both home and on the farm. We sprayed and wiped our homes in order to kill “99% of known household germs,” while our intensive farmers used copious amounts of antibiotics to achieve ever higher levels of productivity and prevent the inevitable outbreak of disease among the closely confined animals on their holdings.

Of course, we are now rapidly learning of the hidden costs of this naive pursuit to eradicate or dominate the microbial world. As many of us suspected, excessive day-to-day domestic hygiene practices have been linked directly with the recent boom in allergies in developed countries, as our children’s immune systems are threatened. Similarly, our attempts to control disease outbreaks in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) through the routine use of antibiotics is leading to the emergence of antibiotic resistant diseases which now present a very real threat to human health.

Scientists are discovering that our relationship with the bacteria around us –and inside us–is much more complex than we first thought. Indeed, animal researchers in the UK have now established a direct link between exposure to bacteria in early in life and the reduction of allergies and other autoimmune diseases later on. They tested three groups of piglets:  one raised in an outdoor environment, another raised in an indoor environment, and the third reared in an isolated environment (where they were fed antibiotics daily). After examining their gut tissues and faeces at different growth stages, the scientists found that the outdoor pigs quickly developed communities of “friendly” bacteria in their guts which then helped them develop healthy immune systems later in life. They found that 90% of bacteria in the gut of outdoor piglets were species known for their health promoting effects and for their ability to minimize intestinal pathogens, such as E. coli and salmonella. In contrast, “friendly” bacteria made up less than 70% and less than 50% of the gut flora of the indoor pigs and isolated bred pigs, respectively. The researchers also found the differences in gut microbial communities affected the piglets’ immune systems, with the outdoor pigs able to respond more appropriately and effectively to disease challenge. It now appears that exposure to dirt during a pig’s early life actually plays an important part in the development of its natural immunity.

Of course, I am not suggesting a return to the “Dark Ages” for farming, nor a regular diet of fresh soil for our kids. But the emerging science around these issues is now raising important questions about what we really mean by good health and hygiene at home and on the farm. And this new research also represents a small but important step in establishing the scientific facts behind the wide-ranging benefits of grass-based outdoor farming systems. Because it’s not all just “mud and magic.”

Pasturelands are under increasing pressure from development, salinization, overgrazing and transition to annual cropping for grain production (much of which goes to livestock feed). However, if properly managed they represent a carbon sink that could be even greater than forests.

From the FAO website: “Covering some 30 percent of the earth’s ice-free land surface and accounting for 70 percent of its agricultural land, the world’s 3.4 billion ha of grasslands can also play a major role in supporting the adaptation and reducing the vulnerability to climate change of over one billion people who depend on livestock for a living.” This is a ringing endorsement for the practices used in outdoor, pasture-based production – they not only produce healthier, safer, tastier food, but can play a vital role in repairing our ecosystems as well.

Download the entire report here.

In falsely marketing its chicken meat as produced from birds “raised without antibiotics” while still feeding them antibiotics, Tyson Foods was shamelessly exploiting the growing public concern over the excessive use of antibiotics in industrial farming, particularly in the form of non-therapeutic growth promoters.

But while the intensive meat industry continues to vigorously oppose any attempts to reduce antibiotic use in farming, the irony is that Tyson Foods may well have inadvertently shot itself in the foot by publicly admitting that the overuse of certain antibiotics in industrial farming really is a threat to human health.

Antibiotic resistant bacteria

The practice of feeding farm animals low doses of antibiotics in food and water began back in the 1950s, and has since become standard practice. Nowadays, virtually all intensively farmed animals will receive low levels of antibiotics in their feed, water or by injection throughout their lives as so called “growth promoters” to help maximize production and minimize costs. This approach allows today’s intensive poultry farmers, for example, to keep tens of thousands of chickens indoors in an unnatural state of false health, whereby the low-level antibiotics suppress key diseases which would otherwise spread like wildfire in such close-confined and all too often unsanitary environments. Sound too good to be true? Well, it is.

Mounting scientific evidence now suggests that Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) are a breeding ground for diseases that pose a real threat to human health. Indeed, the routine low-level, non-therapeutic use of antibiotics as growth promoters to suppress diseases – rather than as a therapeutic treatment for outright cure – is leading to the development and proliferation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the animal and human population.

Key antibiotic-resistant bacteria are now starting to hit humans hard, with various emerging resistant strains of E. coli, salmonella and MRSA, to name just a few. The US Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy claims that MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) infections are up more than 50% since 1987, while some estimate that antibiotic resistant infections are increasing healthcare costs by $4-5 billion a year. It is clear that antibiotic resistant disease represents a ticking time bomb for human health – and people are finally waking up to this fact.

False marketing

In a rather cynical attempt to capitalize on this growing public concern, in 2007, Tyson Foods began marketing its chicken as “raised without antibiotics” after first gaining approval from the USDA to do so. But the problem was that Tyson Foods wasn’t telling the USDA the whole story; after finding out that the company was still including ionophores in its poultry feed, the USDA quickly revoked its decision.

Classified by the USDA as antibiotics, ionophores are a group of animal medicines commonly added to industrial poultry feed to help prevent coccidiosis, an intestinal parasite. Ionophores are just one of several groups of antibiotics that are used by the major industrial farming businesses; the problem is that many are also vital for treating disease in humans.

Initially, Tyson’s legal team tried to argue that ionophores weren’t officially classified as antibiotics, but the USDA quickly reaffirmed that they were and that Tyson must therefore stop selling its chicken as “raised without antibiotics.”

Tyson approached the USDA again, this time arguing that because ionophores were not actually used in human medicine, their use in farming could not lead to the possible emergence of diseases with antibiotic resistance to important human drugs. On this basis, Tyson said that they were willing to compromise and would modify their labels to state “chicken raised without antibiotics that impact antibiotic resistance in humans.” But it never got that far; once Tyson’s key competitors got wind of the issue, they filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that Tyson Foods’ labeling ideas constituted false advertising. In June 2008, Tyson Foods voluntarily withdrew the label entirely, and finally settled the case in early 2010.

Tyson backfires…

But while many journalists will simply dismiss this whole episode as yet another damning indictment of our troubled food and farming systems, this story might not end there: for Tyson Foods has inadvertently shot itself – and the industrial food lobby – in the foot.

By modifying its label from “chicken raised without antibiotics” to “chicken raised without antibiotics that impact antibiotic resistance in humans,” Tyson Foods is implicitly admitting that the non-ionophore antibiotics used in industrial farming “impact antibiotic resistance in humans.” It’s there in black and white for us all to see (http://www.tyson.com/Corporate/PressRoom/ViewArticle.aspx?id=2955).

The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that about 70% of all antibiotics used in the United States are given to farm animals, so it’s understandable that you might think that this practice is essential for the production of our meat. But the US farming industry is already four years behind the European Union, 14 years behind Denmark and 24 years behind Sweden in banning the non-therapeutic use of medically important antibiotics in farm animal production. All of these countries have taken positive action to protect the long-term viability of their citizens and the antibiotics that protect them against disease. And, unless I’ve missed something, I am pretty sure that all of these countries still have a thriving livestock farming industry. Indeed, early evidence suggests that the antibiotic bans are already leading to a lower prevalence of antimicrobial resistance in animal bacterial populations – and increased livestock growth rates. It seems that managing animals in order to make sure they don’t get ill in the first place leads to more productive animals. Common sense, don’t you think?

Industry opposition

So why does the US industrial farming industry – including the American Farm Bureau, American Meat Institute and the National Pork Producers Council – still have such an issue with recent proposals which seek only to reduce the (mis)use of antibiotics in agriculture and preserve these tools which are so vital for the protection of human health?

Well, the sad truth is that intensive farming operations have knowingly profited from the misuse of medically important antibiotics for years, at the expense of human health and animal welfare. How else can you explain their dogged opposition to the introduction of simple safeguards that would help to prevent the emergence of antibiotic resistant strains of life-threatening diseases, such as E. coli and MRSA?

In 2008, after a lengthy independent investigation to assess the farm animal industry’s impact on the public’s health, the environment, farm communities and animal welfare, the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production called for stricter regulation of antibiotic use in large-scale animal operations, stating that “the present system of producing food animals in the United States is not sustainable and presents an unacceptable level of risk to public health.” Without any real research its calls were refuted by the industrial farming lobby, which claimed that limiting antibiotic use would threaten animal health and welfare and increase the risk of food-borne disease.

PAMTA – a step in the right direction

Similarly, the recent proposal to introduce the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (PAMTA) is at risk of being derailed by the intensive farming lobby – despite the fact that the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the National Association of County and City Health Departments and hundreds of other health, consumer, environmental, agricultural, and humane organizations all support the legislation.

PAMTA would still allow therapeutic use of antibiotics to treat sick animals, but would prohibit the non-therapeutic feeding of medically important antibiotics to livestock, as well as require any antibiotics that are destined for non-therapeutic livestock use to undergo safety tests to ensure that they will not harm human health due to antibiotic resistance. Surely this is just plain commonsense?

Yet the industrial farming lobby – and even the usually very enlightened American Veterinary Medical Association – is forcefully opposing PAMTA, claiming that animal health and welfare would suffer and food-borne diseases would increase. Again, as far as I am aware, I’m not hearing regular reports of mass public food poisoning incidents from countries which have banned non-therapeutic use of antibiotics.

We’re already doing it – naturally…

The truth is that farmers don’t need to use non-therapeutic antibiotic treatments in order to keep their animals healthy and productive. Just like farmers in other countries, thousands of farmers across the USA – including Animal Welfare Approved farmers – already rear their livestock without ongoing reliance on non-therapeutic antibiotics.

AWA farmers maintain herd health through vaccination, pasture management, exceptional hygiene, and the reduction of stress which weakens animal immune systems. Of course, if an animal is sick and needs medical treatment AWA standards allow the use of antibiotics, where appropriate. It’s just plain old reasonable farming; nothing more, nothing less.

Despite its continued opposition to PAMTA and the Pew Commission, Tyson Foods has now openly admitted that some antibiotics used in agriculture risk creating “antibiotic resistance in humans.” We also know from experience here and in Europe that we can farm successfully without reliance on these growth promoters. We cannot afford to allow industrial farming to carry on misusing antibiotics for profit, at the expense of public health and animal welfare. It is time that we stop using antibiotics to prop up unsustainable and poor welfare farming systems, and instead do everything we can to ensure that these remarkable medicinal tools remain as effective as possible for treating killer human diseases. The alternative is simply unthinkable.