Can We Beat The Superbugs?

Superbugs are drug-resistant bacteria. By 2050, these bugs could kill more people than cancer. This is what we’re doing about it.

Last year, President Obama formed the National Task Force for Combating Resistant Bacteria. Its goal was to put together a 5-year plan to slow the spread of what many experts see as the public health crisis of our time: antibiotic-resistant superbugs.

Today, that task force released their plan. While it isn't bad, it doesn't sufficiently address a major contributor to the growth and spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Here's what you need to know:

1. Superbugs are scary

Via cagle.com

If you weren't already worrying about antibiotic-resistant bacteria, start. Antibiotic resistant infections sicken 2 million and kill 23,000 Americans a year. We use antibiotics to treat everything from pregnancy complications to ear infections. Before antibiotics, five of every 1,000 mothers died giving birth. Ear infections could cause deafness.

2. Overuse is the problem

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is projected to kill more people than cancer by 2050. / Via amr-review.org

When Alexander Fleming accepted the Nobel Prize for his discovery of the antibiotic penicillin, he warned that “It is not difficult to make microbes resistant to penicillin”—if microbes are exposed to, but not killed by, any drug, they can adapt and become resistant. After that, antibiotics won’t work against that microbe and won’t help cure your infection. It’s this kind of infection that’s projected to kill more people than cancer by 2050.

3. Agriculture is making it worse

Via Flickr: farmsanctuary1

Right now, up to 70% of antibiotics sold in the U.S. are given to livestock and poultry, many of which regularly get fed their helping of the drugs whether they're sick or not. Think: Antibiotic-O’s Breakfast Cereal.

In dirty, cramped factory farms, animals are given these antibiotics just to remain “healthy”. Antibiotics also help them grow faster with less feed. In 1977, the FDA tried to ban this practice, after discovering that feeding animals routine antibiotics helps resistant bacteria develop and travel off the farm and into our communities through the water, air, even our food.

The FDA has asked pharmaceutical companies to remove “for growth promotion” from their drug labels, but that’s not likely to change anything. As long as they can, factory farms and pharmaceutical companies are going to do whatever earns the most profit. And right now, that’s using a ton of antibiotics.

4. This plan won't cut it

Via tablespooning.com

The Plan proposed today by the National Task Force for Combating Resistant Bacteria doesn't fully address the problem. I does not ask for cuts to antibiotics used for disease prevention, and what it does ask for is voluntary.

"President Obama gets an A for tackling this problem from multiple angles," said Sujatha Jahagirdar, U.S. Public Interest Research Group’s Stop Antibiotics Overuse Program Director. "But in terms of addressing the biggest problem, the troubling overuse and misuse of antibiotics on large factory farms, the administration gets an incomplete."

The World Health Organization, the Center for Disease Control, and a host of experts around the globe agree that we must significantly reduce antibiotic use on factory farms--immediately. So, why aren’t we?

5. Europe's doing it

Via pigresearchcentre.dk

Denmark banned the use of antibiotics on farms for growth and disease prevention—essentially, any reason other than treating a single, currently-existing infection—and we should too. Not how have overall instances of disease decreased, but production has actually increased. So, that argument that we need routine antibiotics to produce enough food? Wrong.

The research about antibiotic alternatives is actually really cool. Different studies conducted around the world have found that probiotics, essential oils, and even bamboo vinegar can successfully treat animals’ infections. And when animals are actually sick, they should absolutely be treated—by whatever it is that cures them. That’s not what we’re doing. Why not?

6. You can help

http://U.S.PIRG / Via Facebook: U.S.PIRG

This isn't a Liberal or a Conservative issue. It's not a 1% or 99% issue. It's sort of a factory farm vs family farm issue, but mostly, wasting antibiotics on otherwise healthy animals is just a really big issue. Luckily, it can be fixed.

The food system is influenced by the market and the government--and both of those are influenced by you. The more people who speak out against the overuse and misuse of antibiotics in agriculture, the more likely it is to change. Recently, McDonald's committed to phasing out human antibiotics from their chicken supply, due in large part to the voices and faces of everyday people who took the time to ask. The same can happen again.

Click here to ask President Obama to address the overuse of antibiotics in factory farming.