Pigs could go cold turkey - Brief Article

Better Nutrition, Nov, 2003

A report issued August 13, 2003 by the World Health Organization (WHO) strongly bolsters the United Nations health organization's longstanding position that the common use of antibiotics in healthy animals should be curtailed.

Denmark banned antibiotic use in farm animals in 1999. The WHO study--by an international panel of experts in veterinary medicine and infectious diseases--says the ban has had no serious negative effects. The report concludes that pork and poultry industries in other countries can thrive without using antibiotics to promote animal growth.

In many countries, including the United States and Canada, antibiotics are routinely added to animal feed even when livestock are not sick because antibiotics make animals grow faster and fatter. But the practice can quickly breed supergerms--drug-resistant bacteria that may infect people who eat contaminated meat, or consume food of water tainted by the animals' droppings.

Concern about drug-resistant germs led Denmark to ban antibiotics for growth promotion, although officials continue to allow them for sick animals. A benefit of the ban, the report said, was a sharp decline in the levels of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the farm animals, which in turn reduced the threat to public health.

Farms in North America and elsewhere would, however, have to meet the conditions in which animals are raised in Denmark, which has high standards for hygiene and sophisticated systems for monitoring antibiotic use and drug resistance.

Maybe that's why bills have been introduced in the US House and Senate to phase out the routine use in animals of those antibiotics also used to treat human diseases.