What are the risks of farmers using antibiotics on their livestock? Why DO farmers use antibiotics? Are there consequences to regulating bovine drug-use?
These were the questions that we asked at Fair Food Fight Night on Tuesday at Cheeky Monkey, where a group of about thirty enthusiastic food-folk heard from our panel of experts: Greg Jans, dairy farmer of Co-Jo Dairy in Grove City and vice president of the Minnesota Milk Producers Association, Maryn McKenna, the author of Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA, and Thom Petersen of the Minnesota Farmers Union.
Maryn McKenna laid down the awful facts. Staphylococcus aureas has grown resistant to modern antibiotics, effectively creating a superbug known as MRSA. MRSA causes thousands of deaths in America per year, and has been a thorn in the side of modern medicince for decades now, sinc emodern antibiotics are ineffective against it. But what had been seen as a tragedy impacting only hospitals is now understood to be a “community” phenomenon, with cases of MRSA appearing in prisons, schools, gyms, and, recently, pig farms.
McKenna went on to describe how MRSA was first dicovered on a pig farm in the Netherlands, with experts tying the country’s use of antibiotics to the development of this seemingly new strain of MRSA (called ST 398).
What’s at risk, she said, is no less than the efficacy of our current generation of antibiotics. “It takes ten years for a new antibiotic to come online. Staph evolves in a matter of days.”
Greg Jans spoke next. He’s a “conventional” farmer — like Thom Petersen I’m not wild about this term, and I use it for lack of a better one to differentiate Jans’ practices from sustainable or organic dairies. Jans’ herd is 600 strong. He uses antibiotics to treat his cows for mastitis, a swelling of the udder and teet, uterus infections, and other ailments. (to be exact, he uses antibiotics “therapeutically, but not “subtherapeutically,” that is, to prevent disease and promote growth.) Jans described in detail how his milk is tested for antibiotics before it leaves the farm and he went into the checks and tests that existafterward to make sure no contaminated milk enters the food chain. He related how one of his cows, with a red band on its hoof to show it had been treated with antibiotics, had wandered into the milking parlor.
“It happens,” he said. “They are creatures with minds of their own. It can happen.”
Through Co-Jo Dairy’s own testing, they caught the milk load before it went out and dumped the milk, but testing on the other end determined residues existed in the tank’s next load, so that load was dumped too. Jans said this exemplified that testing works and he felt very sure that dairy industry systems are in place to protect public health from antibiotics.
When I asked about what impact regulation on antibiotics like PAMTA would have on his farm, Jans was grim. He said it would probably increase costs to the consumer and that it would pain him not to use antibiotics if his cattle were sick. “To a farmer, cows are like your children. Would you refuse treatment to your own kids if they were sick?” he said at one point, in a very low voice.
Thom Petersen spoke next. This is where I wish I had been an audience member instead of moderating because whenever Thommy speaks, I learn a ton. As Government Affairs Director, he said the Minnesota Farmers Union’s recommendation to its members was to move away from antibiotic use, for many of the reasons that Maryn McKenna outlined. But he said that how such a move would take place was crucial. Minnesota farmers have been following the antibiotic-use debate with some concern, worried that they would be losing a necessary “tool in their tool chest.”
He and Greg both said that it was impossible to tell what effect PAMTA-like legislation would have on price, but that milk prices would probably have to rise. They also said that there was a certain amount of defensivenesss in ag circles about farmers being singled out as the culprits behind superbugs and antibiotic-resistance. Thom said that Rep. Collin Petersen of Minnesota, the chair of the House Agriculture Committee (and no relation to Thom), was calling for examination of antibiotic overuse in the medical profession. After all, what’s good for the goose…
Audience participation was excellent at Fair Food Fight Night, just as I expected it would be. One listener referred to a story that Thom told, about a hog farmer who told him, “What’s better, that I feed my animals a small amount of antibiotics daily, or wait until they get sick and hit them with all I’ve got?” The audience member said that was what had to change. “The problems that Maryn described are happening because of daily antibiotic usage,” he said. “It’s a cultural change that has to take place in agriculture.” [I'm only paraphrasing, of course, since I was moderating]. Thom seemed to agree that this was indeed the challenge before agriculture.
On a side note, Jon Mesko of Lighthouse Farm came to say hello to the crowd. I always feel extremely lucky when farmers like Mesko or Jans attend these events in summer, since it’s an incredibly busy time for them. But it was great to be able to introduce Mesko to Crop Mobsters who will be coming to his farm on July 17.
I think I got most of the deets on FFF Night, but if I missed something, or if you want to continue the discussion, please post comments below.
And thanks again to Maryn, Greg, and Thom for their time and energy on Fair Food Fight Night.
(Next FFF Night will be Friday night, July 23, and all I’ll say is that it’s going to be a riot…)
Greg Jans’ concern about the potential fiscal repercussions of PAMTA on livestock producers is not unfounded. But I believe he is overestimating the regulations that the legislation would place on farmers like himself. According to the Pew Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming’s website on the matter (http://www.saveantibiotics.com” href=”http://www.saveantibiotics.com/”>http://www.saveantibiotics.com), PAMTA would “withdraw the routine use of seven classes of antibiotics vitally important to human health from food animal production unless animals or herds are sick with disease…” As such, farmers like Jans (who only use antibiotics therapeutically), would not be affected if the legislation passes. Instead, farmers who put low doses of antibiotics over long periods of time in their animals’ feed to preemptively stave off disease and promote growth (and thus create ideal environments for bacteria to develop resistance), would be the ones forced to change their practices.
PAMTA would work to the advantage of farmers who are judicious in their use of antibiotics. Let’s hope it passes so we can just as judiciously prevent the creation of more superbugs like MRSA and preserve life-saving antibiotics for human health.