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SMGN Health Department
Antibiotic Resistant Diseases Looming in the Food Chain - a Problem that's Here to Stay
11/16/2007
First it was meat and now it's fish. The news is exposing the practice of over medicating food stock both in the United States and abroad, where the problem is even more prevalent.
It's a classic story of survival of the fittest. Only it's not people - it's deadly bacteria, the fittest of which survive the use of even the most powerful forms of antibiotics used against them. They breed strong drug resistant infectious diseases that will be a problem for years to come.
The food industry has it's hands full. It's not just the fact that people eat overmedicated livestock and fish, which causes lower resitance to MRSA and other deadly disease. Add to this the fact that animals of all sorts produce much more waste than human beings.
According to the USDA animals produce 61 million tons of waste each year. This is approximately 130 times the volume of human waste, which the public already knows is problematic for the environment because it has to answer to the question of its own waste water every time their cities have leaky pipes and boil water orders.
Days when the average citizen is completely ignorant of the problems associated with animal waste and disease are coming to a quick end. The threat to life and outbreak of apocalyptic plagues, or the fear of them, will ensure that this is the case.
Add to this the advent of green industry. When business has an interest in public awareness market forces are even stronger than political forces in getting ideas across. It may be politically correct to go green for a season. But when high tech industry steps in seasons endure forever. As long as somebody is making a buck from it you can be sure it will stay in the news.
In the case of MRSA fears and concerns about over medicated food supply this is a very good thing - maybe not for the larger body of food suppliers who plan on continuing to do things the old way - but certainly for those who think progressively and know how to shift with changing tides. SMGN will unabashedly engage in fear-mongering to prevent a serious worldwide outbreak of disease. It's a cause we believe in.
We're not clean freaks and we're not nerds. Actually our purpose is to support grocers in their business. But we are doing it with the knowledge that certain problems are not going to go away, not without good planning.
According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental group often called on for facts in Washington, American farmers are using 24.6 million pounds of antimicrobials annually on livestock for non-therapeutic uses. This is more than five times what human beings are consuming per individual and accounts for 84% of all antibiotic use in the US.
It is a profit driven conundrum. The animals get disease more frequently because they produce more waste, don't clean themselves adequately, often lying in their own excrement, and are herded together, sharing infections. They are treated more frequently to keep sickness down and margins high. But in the long run, their natural resistance is destroyed while diseases become stronger.
All of this is served up at supper time.
That is why organic is going to take over the market over time. No matter what their economic or demographic status, the public will no longer be ignorant. The question is what is your plan?