La prohibición del uso de antibioticos en el Ganado...¿solución falsa?

Las personas que no están dispuestas a consumir carne de res, en muchas

ocasiones argumentan que, los ganaderos utilizamos antibióticos y estos

hacen que la carne sea de mala calidad y genere resistencias en los seres

humanos. Imaginan que los utilizamos como una herramienta diaria y sin

responsabilidad. En su orden de ideas, no conciben que también los animales

se enferman y usando antibióticos se curan.

Hay un movimiento mundial que intenta prohibir el uso de antibióticos en el

ganado.

Les compartimos este texto.

Banning agricultural antibiotic use is a false solution

There's a lot of misinformation out there among the general public about
food and food production. And a lot of that can be shaken off and we move
forward in a constructive manner. But if there's one issue where
agriculture really takes it on the chin it's about the use of antibiotics in
livestock. 

That's not surprising; when two critically-important, complex issues
together into the crucible there's potential for lots of misdirection.
That's unfortunate because the judicious use of antibiotics (or lack
thereof) and potential for antibiotic resistance is a matter of public
health – it touches us all in some form or fashion. That importance
underscores the necessity of having genuine, science-based discussion around
the issue. Smoke and mirrors won't suffice. Nonetheless, the issue has
come to the forefront in recent months.
 

First, there was the lawsuit filed by a coalition of public interest groups.
The suit asserts the Food and Drug Administration has violated federal law
by failing to actively withdraw approval of penicillin and tetracycline
usage in animal feed for non-therapeutic, growth-promotant purposes despite
claims FDA previously concluded that such tactics facilitate development of
antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains. Hence, the suit is predicated on
the claim of, "…growing evidence that the spread of bacteria immune to
antibiotics has clear links to the overuse of antibiotics in the food
industry." Dovetailing that effort came proposed legislation in both the
House and Senate aimed at reduced antibiotic use in animal agriculture.
The bills are primarily designed to phase out non-therapeutic use of
antibiotics in livestock. The talking points are the same. For example,
Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), upon reintroduction of the legislation: "The
rampant overuse of antibiotics in agriculture that creates drug-resistant
bacteria, an increasing threat to human beings….The effectiveness of
antibiotics for humans is jeopardized when they are used to fatten healthy
pigs or speed the growth of chickens."
 

So the logic is this: antibiotics are utilized in farm animals, resistant
strains of bacteria fail to be contained and thus escape the farm, the
public is subsequently exposed to such bacteria via various avenues
(including consumption of meat), citizens eventually become ill, and
ultimately the illness is unresponsive to treatment. Therefore, you see
efforts to curtail ongoing use in food production settings and pre-empt
approval for new antibiotics and/or uses of currently existing
antimicrobials in livestock. That all sounds simple enough. And the
average citizen hearing that type of rhetoric is going to immediately assume
that such litigation and legislation is necessary.
 

However, the issue isn't that simple. As mentioned above, it's a public
health issue and the matter of resistance can't end simply with removing
subtherapeutic use of antibiotics in livestock production; the solution is
only as good as the weakest link. There's no sense in limiting use on the
farm if medical misuse is also not going to be curtailed. The issue must
be addressed comprehensively, not to mention that there's never been a
scientifically documented link between antibiotic use in livestock and
increasing risk of bacterial resistance in humans. Therefore, lawsuits and
legislation simply make agriculture a political scapegoat; that's a
disservice to the broader public - it's disingenuous, inappropriate, and
most importantly, ineffective. In fact, to the contrary, Hurd et al.
(Journal of Food Protection, 2004) demonstrated in their farm-to-patient
risk assessment the use of antibiotics in farm animals represents a "very
low risk of human treatment failure" - depending on the pathogen assessed
the treatment failure risk ranged from 1 in 10 million to 1 in 3 billion.
The medical community must take part in this conversation. Most notably,
antibiotic prescription practices must be addressed. Frivolous treatment
has become increasingly widespread. Numerous studies reveal that patients
expect antibiotics (regardless of appropriateness – the desire of to preempt
any secondary infection). Doctors, often time-crunched and motivated to
maintain their respective patient base, often acquiesce to patient pressure.
The system is designed around the individual patient – public health
concerns about potential resistance go unaddressed amidst the individual
doctor-patient relationship. Moreover, none of this addresses misuse of
antibiotics (failing to take the full course and subsequently saving for
some later illness) once the prescription is in hand.
 

Lest we forget, resistance is not a new phenomenon and was on the radar
screen long before antibiotic use was regularly implemented in livestock
production. Maryn McKenna (Superbug, c. 2010) explains it like this:
Penicillin [released to the public in 1944] was a wonder drug, the first
glimpse of the antibiotic miracle that would quell the ancient scourge of
infectious disease, and its inventors were heroes. A portrait of [Sir
Alexander] Fleming appeared on the cover of Time in May 1944 over the
caption:
 

"His penicillin will save more lives than war can spend." The drug cut
cases of syphilis and deaths from pneumonia by 75 percent and deaths from
rheumatic fever by 90 percent. It did so well against serious diseases that
its benefits were shared around for minor problems too. It was freely sold
over the counter, in mouthwash, sore-throat lozenges, first-aid ointments,
even cosmetics. In the United States, it was not made prescription-only
until 1951. Fleming himself predicted what would happen next. In his
speech accepting the Nobel Prize in December 1945, he said:
"There is the danger that the ignorant man may easily under-dose himself and
by exposing his microbes to non-lethal quantities of the drug, make them
resistant. Here is a hypothetical illustration. Mr. X has a sore throat.
 

He buys some penicillin and gives himself, not enough to kill the
streptococci but enough to educate them to resist penicillin. He then
injects his wife. Mrs. X gets pneumonia and is treated with penicillin. As
the streptococci are no resistant to penicillin the treatment fails. Mrs. X
dies."
 

Fleming was sadly right, though amidst the joy over penicillin's impact, the
research that would prove his prediction received little publicity. In
December, 1940, before the drug had ever been tested in a human, [biochemist Ernst] Chain and his Oxford University colleague Edward Abraham said in a letter to the journal Nature that the common gut bacteria E. coli seemed to be evolving a defense against the new drug and was producing an enzyme that kept penicillin from working. Two years later, Charles Rammelkamp and Thelma Maxon of Boston University demonstrated experimentally that staph bacteria could also develop protection against the effects of penicillin. 

At the end of the day, strict focus on eliminating use of subtherapeutic
antibiotic use in livestock is a case of target fixation (fixated on the
target – livestock lest we forget to take necessary action to avoid the
dangers of collision – widespread resistance). We can try to be like
Denmark but that fails on several counts: First, it's not effective in
eliminating antibiotic use at the farm level; we can try to be like Denmark
and completely eliminate the subtherapeutic use of antibiotics in livestock
production. The Denmark experience reveals that therapeutic use of
antibiotics to treat animal disease increased over 200 percent between 1998
and 2009. Second, there's been no documentation of antibiotic resistance in
humans has declined. Lastly, it completely overlooks the human side of the
issue.
 

General perception that somehow, someway A new rule always makes everything better….but does it? In this case, most definitely not!!!

Lulling general public into a false sense of security!
 

Source: Nevil C. Speer, PhD, MBA, Western Kentucky University