
Farm animals in India and China are becoming more resistant to antibiotics - digital55
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02861-5
======
kryogen1c
Source paper
[https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6459/eaaw1944.ful...](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6459/eaaw1944.full)

>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 is painting itself into a corner along
multiple dimensions. I wonder at how many previous points in history did new
technology save us from the brink of annihilation. Im not sure we've ever been
powerfull enough to be truly as in danger as we are now.

On the other hand, earth is still slaloming between asteroids we cant predict
or stop so we've never been out of danger at all. Oh well, back to work.

~~~
maxerickson
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.

~~~
avip
Not to contradict you, but had we the Spanish flu today you'd get 300mm dead
within a year, and about 2.5 _Billion_ people hospitalized... that would far
exceed any humanitarian crisis we can currently imagine.

~~~
maxerickson
The public health response was relatively ineffective in 1918 (influenza was
not particularly well understood then), a similar virus would very likely not
infect the same proportion of people as were infected then.

The proportion would probably also be reduced in at least 2 ways. The
geographic extent would be smaller, and in areas where there were outbreaks,
fewer people would be infected.

If there was a good vaccine match for the virus, even more so.

~~~
abeppu
> The geographic extent would be smaller

This is definitely not my area, but as a lay person I've heard that because of
the large increase in global travel, a dangerous flu strain could spread
basically to basically every continent before we had time to meaningfully
respond. Do you have reason to believe that isn't the case?

------
prongletown
I've been a vegetarian for a few years. Part of the impetus for my choice was
the lack of regulation and health code standards in this country.

Recent news that the federal government is reducing inspection of meat really
does scare me. How many people need to die (like in the early 1900s) before we
re-realize the importance of these regulations on public life? When will the
next Upton Sinclair come along?

~~~
flmontpetit
Upton Sinclair lamented the fact that nobody really got the point of The
Jungle.

I think after all this time he is about to be proven right.

~~~
nitwit005
You're correct that he complained about that, but the point was supposed to be
about the exploitation and abuse of laborers.

~~~
flmontpetit
That's true, but "exploitation and abuse of laborers" and "tubercular beef"
were ultimately caused by the same thing.

~~~
jacobolus
Upton Sinclair’s complaint was that everyone cared about the health
implications but didn’t care about the workers.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle#Reception](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle#Reception)

------
wonderwonder
"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 that short term gains
are well worth long term disaster.

~~~
rwj
What's rational for the individual is not always well aligned with what's
rational for the society.

~~~
Dumblydorr
There are negative externalities, in other words, and a truly well functioning
economy would align bad behavior with higher costs, surely we can get
there...?

~~~
josephorjoe
Not without government regulation.

Businesses never regulate themselves _before_ the disaster because it is
always more profitable to use the "there won't be a disaster" scenario plan.

~~~
johnisgood
"One must distinguish regulation (which often is specific to a certain area of
business) from law (which is more general). For example, there are laws
against fraud, and long before governments began to regulate the US economy,
people brought alleged fraud cases to court, as well as other tort action that
existed under a common law system."

"Private enterprise works on a voluntary basis, a business owner cannot coerce
someone to do business with him. Things like loss of reputation, shoddy
products, poor service and the like serve as real boundaries for business
owners, who in a free market survive only by offering goods that people are
willing to purchase.

There are numerous private (read that, voluntary) organizations that police
businesses, settle disputes, independently test products, and provide needed
information for consumers and producers alike. Yes, these organizations do
have a regulating effect upon the behavior of individuals who participate in
private production and exchange."

Edit: removed the conclusions, the rest - in my opinion - is relevant to the
comment above.

~~~
erikpukinskis
"without government regulation, there would be no legal oversight of markets"

"without government, markets would be a chaotic mess"

No one said those things. You've proved wrong claims that nobody made.

------
Lio
That’s not a great post title IMHO and doesn’t match the article.

It implies that farm animals are refusing to take their tablets...

Why not just go with “Alarm as antimicrobial resistance surges among chickens,
pigs and cattle” as per the Nature article?

~~~
jessaustin
Technically the resistance is a property of "Salmonella, Campylobacter,
Staphylococcus and E. coli", not chickens, pigs, and cattle.

------
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-...](https://www.quora.com/How-do-antibiotics-cause-farm-animals-to-
gain-weight)

~~~
hombre_fatal
How happy are these animals in the documentary, Dominion?

[https://youtu.be/LQRAfJyEsko?t=984](https://youtu.be/LQRAfJyEsko?t=984)

Your post presents a nice rainbows and sunshine guess at how the animal ag
industry works, and I really wish it worked like that, too.

~~~
drak0n1c
Dominion... of Australia? I quoted Harman Meyerhoff, an independent American
dairy farmer.

If the goal is to solve a problem, when hearing different opinions and life
experiences a better instinct to have is empathy -- calling people shills
won't get you anywhere.

------
sadmann1
I'm absolutely shocked who could have predicted this

~~~
StreamBright
We need a new drug platform because the current model only satisfy the owners
of the pharma corporations.

~~~
airstrike
this has nothing to do with how Big Pharma develops drugs...

~~~
vas777
Why ? If new antibiotics are not profitable in the long run, then you don't do
that. That was presented in the podcast.

What is your explanation?

~~~
airstrike
My explanation is the problem lies in the food source, not antibiotics. We
can't rely on the continuous increase in the use of antibiotics to prevent a
food cataclysm.

Presumably any newly developed antibiotic would be sold for prices similar to
existing ones, if not for a premium. If this results in decreasing profits,
then we must conclude development costs are rising, which suggests finding new
antibiotics is increasingly harder. Sure, we can throw taxpayer money at it to
have more drugs developed and introduced in the near-to-mid term, but if
finding new antibiotics is indeed continuously harder, at some point it will
also be too expensive for public money to finance R&D

We have to aim to solve the root cause, not just mindlessly continue to throw
money at it

------
alkonaut
It’s time to start trade wars over the use of antibiotics in healthy livestock
instead of starting trade wars for silly protectionism. There needs to be some
kind of sanction.

------
petre
It would be interesting to extend the study to other regions as well. The map
doesn show any data for North America, Europe, Australia and Russia.

~~~
peterwwillis
> Van Boeckel and his colleagues analysed 901 epidemiological studies,
> conducted in developing nations

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noodlesUK
Please can this title be changed? Perhaps “antibiotic resistant bacteria surge
in farm animals in China and India“. The current title plays directly into the
common misconception that it’s the host that becomes resistant to an
antibiotic rather than the microbes within them. This misconception confuses
the narrative that antibiotic resistance is a growing global threat (which it
is).

------
alexfromapex
Can we please stop overusing antibiotics? They are essentially dangerous
organic weapons we don’t understand

~~~
warent
That would mean less livestock farming, which means people would have to
accept a life with less meat. It's simply not going to happen. Humans are way
too arrogant and inflexible to impose the smallest inconvenience on themselves
unless faced with tangible, immediately harmful effects. Not to mention the
complete shift in the global economy that it would demand. I've been a
vegetarian for about 4 years and the cognitive dissonance you start to see is
remarkable. People claim to love animals and hate animal cruelty through
mouthfuls of burger and pork.

~~~
KingMachiavelli
Personally, I find the environmental issues & existential threat of climate
change that livestock farming contributes towards is the far more motivating
factor in reducing consumption of meat & animal products. It's a false
dichomity to say it's impossible to 'love' some animals while eating others;
it's bit absurd to claim since humans have been doing so for 1000s of years
and that we've domesticated an entire species (dogs), in part, to help us
raise livestock, etc.

~~~
seanwilson
> It's a false dichomity to say it's impossible to 'love' some animals while
> eating others

It might not be impossible but it's a strange double standard that e.g. people
would be against any form of cruelty at all to dogs but are fine with factory
farmed cows and pigs. I don't find the argument that dogs have been brought up
to be companions for 1000s of years a compelling justification. Most people
couldn't even watch videos of how cows and pigs are slaughtered let alone do
it themselves which to me is telling that they're aware of the suffering
caused but choose to ignore it.

------
babyslothzoo
Humans are squandering arguably one of the most important medical advancements
in history, and ultimately it will be human health that pays for it when they
stop working for us entirely.

------
spiderfarmer
There's a lot the rest of the world can learn from Dutch agriculture:
[https://www.allaboutfeed.net/Feed-
Additives/Articles/2017/10...](https://www.allaboutfeed.net/Feed-
Additives/Articles/2017/10/Dutch-antibiotic-use-continues-to-
decline-195504E/?dossier=25397&widgetid=1)

------
cwkoss
Has the US reduced agriculture antibiotic use recently? I know we used to use
tons of them as prophylactic and to help weight gain.

Why aren't we on the graph? Are US animal microbes less resistant, and if so
why?

------
ropiwqefjnpoa
If only we had been warned!

------
goatinaboat
Well, if course they are. Chinese farmers use antibiotics like candy. Even the
stuff that the West considers reserve antibiotics of last resort. There is
zero possibility of any Western pressure making them stop. Look also at the
CO2 they emit and the plastic they dump in the ocean. The CCP has only two
modes, rising living standards by questionable means, and mass die-offs of the
population. This is the strategy of Mao.

~~~
johnmulaney
No, western pressure could certainly stop the CCP, but there's no political
will for it. Especially not when the west is too busy self-flagellating itself
over its own real and imagined wrongdoings.

~~~
jessaustin
Ask a Uighur how much good "western pressure" has done for the concentration
camps in Xinjiang. If we're not going to war over literal concentration camps
(which is acceptable; we're in too many wars already), we're not going to war
over antibiotics policy.

