Two weeks ago I had the privilege of leading a panel of three individuals, including myself, at the National Environmental Health Association’s (NEHA) annual Education Conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

I had been recommended to David Dykstra, the executive director of NEHA, by an old friend from my State Health Officer days, Georges Benjamin, currently the executive director of the American Public Health Association.

Dykstra asked me to bring the panel of three to discuss the use of antibiotics in animals raised for food and what that use might mean in the way of antibiotic resistance in human health.

My choices for panelists were easy.

Terry Dwelle, M.D., is a board certified Pediatric Infectious Disease specialist who had just recently completed 15+ years as the state health officer of North Dakota. He is also an ordained minister who spent 10 years in East Africa as a medical missionary.

Dwelle tells the story of encountering Methicillin Resistant Staph aureus (MRSA) in a population that had never seen antibiotics, much less used them in animals.

Bruce Stewart-Brown, D.V.M., is Perdue Foods senior vice president for food safety, quality and live operations. He has been with Perdue for more than a few years, starting out as a field veterinarian.

Stewart-Brown tells the story of how, in 2002, the company decided that the clamor coming from consumers about the use of antibiotics in animals raised for food needed responded to and they began the long road to No Antibiotics Ever.

At the time, 95 percent of their chickens received antibiotics at some point in their life. Now 95 percent of their chickens never receive antibiotics.

The outlying 5 percent receive antibiotics because either they or their building mates are ill. They have a separate label than the NAE used for the other 95 percent.

Dr. Stewart-Brown added an interesting perspective or two about the use of antibiotics in animals raised for food, especially in the poultry industry.

For instance, if a farmer had three grow out facilities on his place, when a flock began to show signs of a contagious illness, he ordered antibiotics in the feed to prevent spread in all three barns.

Now he will order the antibiotic to be used in the water in just the offending barn.

They have found that it is usually the same barn causing the outbreaks, and now they can address the root cause to better prevent future occurrences, a process that has taken ten years to get to near zero outbreaks.

The same can be said for eggs.

Older hens have thinner shelled eggs, leading to increased risk for infection getting thru the barrier to the embryo.

Instead of just using antibiotics as a prevention method in those select eggs, they just vaccinated all the eggs, a measure that was not exactly cost efficient or prudent from an antibiotic use viewpoint.

I hope the NEHA audience learned from our joint presentations that we can reduce antibiotic use in animals, but that that change may not reduce our risk of becoming infected with an antibiotic resistant bacteria.

But it will raise the cost of our food.

Will ‘No Antibiotics Ever’ change our world?

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