To quote fellow Meatingplace Blogger Gregory Bloom in last week’s The Meat Business blog: “What’s causing antibiotic resistance in humans? Overuse of antibiotics in humans.”

Greg follows that header with: “There’s no doubt that, as the CDC report explains, the primary cause of this threat to humans is the inordinate amount of antibiotics being used by people.”

Inordinate: adjective. Unusually or disproportionately large; excessive. Undue, unreasonable, unwarrantable, needless, exorbitant or extreme

The CDC report does state that 50 percent of antibiotics prescribed, mostly in outpatient settings, are unnecessary and inappropriate. No argument from me on that point. But when human medicine uses only 20 percent all the antibiotics sold in this country, how is that inordinate?

While 80 percent of the total are sold for use in animals, mostly to prevent disease and not actually treat disease, treating disease accounts for, by far, most of human antibiotic use. That seems more inordinate to me.

I admit I am being defensive of my fellow human health practitioners, but read on before you throw darts please.

The real threat of antibiotic resistance in humans comes from the superbugs, killers that MDs have few or no antibiotics left to treat. Things like Methicillin Resistant Staph aureus (MRSA), Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococcus (VRE) and Carbapenem Resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE).

Vancomycin, Methicillin and Carbapenem are not used willy-nilly in inordinate amounts. They are precious drugs used only as infusions and almost always initiated in an inpatient setting to treat infections following invasive procedures.

It is true that the common urinary tract infections are becoming more difficult to treat because of resistant E coli. But giving Sulfa to a patient with urinary frequency and burning is not an inordinate use; it is an appropriate use that caused the bacteria to mutate and form resistance to protect its self.

But the practitioner has multiple other, albeit more expensive, alternatives for that problem. For CRE he or she has fired their best shot and the patient has a 50-50 chance of living. And if inordinate use of antibiotics is causing resistance, why is plain old penicillin still the drug of choice after 70 years to treat Strep throat? Put simply, we don’t know.

Staph developed Methicillin resistance in less than one year after FDA approved its use, and not because of inordinate, excessive use.

Part of Greg’s point was that he did not want to see antibiotics removed from animal husbandry just to satisfy mislead consumers. I agree with that point.

I do disagree with a reader comment that chicken meat will go to “$29.99” per pound with No Antibiotics Ever. The reader commented on the Perdue film and how it looked like the house had more room than normal because chickens had died. I don’t think so. That is all part of the plan to make NAE work—less crowding.

I have been told by representatives of two very large chicken producers that they can do this with better sanitation and less crowding in houses, substituting enzymes, probiotics, phages and vaccines, and not raising prices. And without thousands more chickens dying, as was suggested by Greg and readers.

We shall see if that is true.

What constitutes inordinate use of antibiotics?

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