Production of cheap food has significant costs—to government, the environment and public health. Use of antibiotics and concern over resistant bacteria were issues raised during a panel discussion on food safety regulation at Resources for the Future today. The contention, voiced by Glenn Morris, Director of the Emerging Pathogens Institute at the University of Florida, Gainseville, was that in crafting regulatory policy in this area, the endpoint by which we monitor success has to be the public health. Morris argued that the impact to human health of agricultural use of antibiotics may outweigh that of hospital use (See Morris and ETC researcher Dave Smith’s PLoS Medicine paper for a more thorough discussion). As explained in last year’s New Yorker article on Superbugs:

“Seventy per cent of the antibiotics administered in America end up in agriculture,” Michael Pollan, a professor of journalism at Berkeley and the author of “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto,” told me. “The drugs are not used to cure sick animals but to prevent them from getting sick, because we crowd them together under filthy circumstances.”

While producers might save money by overcrowding animals, and using antibiotics for growth promotion--both common in factory farming, the cost of these practices is certainly deferred. What happens on the farm has an impact on the health system.

But the more immediate concern when it comes to food safety is that when we do find Salmonella contaminated peanut butter or Campylobacter contaminated chicken it will be drug resistant.

And so we have yet another reason for a “farm to fork” approach to food safety regulation. The spread of resistant bacteria and less effective drugs are a deadly combination.

Only tangentially related, but worth sharing :)