Sometimes ag publications are the industry’s worst enemy. Bloomberg News published an article August 5, 2016, about vaccines becoming a bigger player in animal health, helping to lower the use of antibiotics used in animals raised for food. Beef Producer copied it word for word in its August 9, 2016, edition.

You can read it yourself here.

It does not exactly state the truth, and implies that deaths from antibiotic resistant bacteria stem from animal ag use of the products.

Some quotes follow from the article.

“Farm animals are fed about 80 percent of the antibiotics in the U.S. which make their way into the human body.”

What makes its way into my body, the animals or the antibiotics? 82 percent of the antibiotics fed to animals are never or very rarely are used in human medicine. In fact, tetracyclines are the only antibiotics used in human medicine that are represented in the 82 percent number.

The sales of tetracyclines in human health comprise only 3 percent of all sales in human medicine and certainly are not big guns in the fight against the super-bugs. The 82 percent number also represents sales for companion animals like horses, cats and dogs, as footnoted on every graph and table on the FDA’s annual sales reports.

What makes this fact even more important is that critical classes of antibiotics used in human health, like the fluoroquinolones and cephalosporins, are severely limited for use in livestock, but readily available for use in companion animals.

“Scientists say there is an intimate link between the health of the planet’s livestock and the human population. An estimated 700,000 people die annually from drug-resistant infections, with millions more falling sick. The prevalent use of antibiotics in animals plays a role in those deaths because they allow super-bugs to flourish.”

There are several problems with the statement, but I will limit discussion on only two. First of all, the estimated number of deaths from antibiotic resistant Infections, according to the Centers for Disease Control, is 23,000. But don’t take my word for it, go to their website and see for yourself. That still a lot of deaths, but they are almost all linked to an invasive procedure in a healthcare facility, not a feedlot.

Secondly, I would ask the writer, Jared Hopkins, to provide a reference for “scientists say” and provide you, the reader, with two quotes from the World Health Organizations first ever report on antibiotic resistance released in April 2014.

The WHO said “The magnitude of transmission from animal reservoirs to humans remains unknown” and “More data are needed to identify priority areas for intervention.” I would submit that “remains unknown” is a long way from an “intimate link.”

Also that WHO report was 232 pages long with just 4 pages on the use of antibiotics in animal agriculture.

The quotes from the Bloomberg story are from the first four paragraphs, so even someone just glancing quickly at the story is going to get the misinformation handed to them by Beef Producer.

Your antagonists can sit back, smile and take the week off. Your publications are doing their work for them.

Animal ag publications need not be the ag industry’s own worst enemy

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