Antibiotics, Agriculture, and Catholic Teaching Antibiotics have been widely used to treat bacterial infections for more than 50 years. It was recognized that bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics just a few years after antibiotics became widely used. Bacteria have the capacity to evolve defense mechanisms against antibiotics and can become resistant to their effects. When bacteria develop resistance to an antibiotic, the antibiotic is no longer capable of treating or curing the disease or infection caused by the target bacteria. The more antibiotics are used the more rapidly bacterial resistance to them develops. There are an increasing number of people infected with bacteria that are resistant to the best antibiotic treatments resulting in higher health care costs, increased suffering, and possibly death. Medical use of antibiotics is one major contributor to the emergence of antibiotic resistance probably due to the overuse of antibiotics. However, the liberal use of antibiotics in livestock production is another important contributor. More than 80 percent of the antibiotics produced in the U.S. each year are used on livestock.Of that, about 90 percent are given as growth-promoting and disease-preventing agents rather than to treat active infections. Antibiotics routinely given to livestock in nontherapeutic (not for the treatment of disease) doses including tetracycline and penicillin account for as much as 80 percent of the antibiotics used in agriculture. The routine use of antibiotics such as penicillin and tetracyclines to promote growth has rendered those antibiotics less effective in treating animal diseases. Other management practices and medications can be used to raise animals economically without growth-promoting antibiotics. Nontherapeutic use causes the development of antibiotic resistance among foodborne pathogens such as Salmonella that can sicken people who consume tainted meat or touch infected animals. Such use can also result in antibiotic resistance in nonpathogenic bacteria that may transfer their resistance genes to disease-causing bacteria, resulting in antibiotic-resistant infections in people. Bacteria carrying tetracycline resistance genes almost identical to those in bacteria living in the digestive system of hogs have been found in soil and groundwater supplies near hog confinement facilities. This strongly suggests that the bacteria in hog manure are transferring their genes to other bacteria and could ultimately transfer genes to bacteria in humans. Antibiotics have been found in human water supplies. Impacts of antibiotics in the environment have not been fully quantified. The European Union, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand have stopped nontherapeutic use of penicillin and tetracyclines. The European Union is moving toward a ban on nontherapeutic use of all medically-important antibiotics. The internationally accepted precautionary principle compels the U.S. Government to protect the public health and ban medically important antibiotics from nontherapeutic uses in agriculture until it can be determined conclusively that such uses of antibiotics are not harmful to humans and the environment. However, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services requires that direct evidence of imminent and quantitative harm to human health be presented before it will ban the continued use of nontherapeutic levels of antibiotics in animal feed. A 1989 report by the Institute of Medicine concluded that there was considerable indirect evidence that feeding penicillin and tetracyclines in nontherapeutic doses to animals increases bacterial resistance to those antibiotics. The American Medical Association "oppose(s) the use of antimicrobials at less than therapeutic levels in agriculture, or as pesticides or growth promoters, and urges that non-therapeutic use in animals of antimicrobials (that are also used in humans) be terminated or phased out based on scientifically sound risk assessments." The American Veterinary Medical Association recommends that use of antibiotics be limited to ill or at risk animals, treating the fewest animals indicated. The Food and Drug Administration proposed in 2000 to ban the use of a class of antibiotics known as fluoroquinolones used therapeutically in poultry, citing increases in resistance to that drug in Campylobacter, the most common cause of food-borne bacterial illness in the U.S. The ban was accepted by one manufacturer, Abbott Laboratories,but the other, Bayer, is contesting it. National Catholic Rural Life Conference (NCRLC) supports discontinuingthe nontherapeutic use of medically important antibiotics in livestock. U In 1997, the Board of Directors of NCRLC called for an immediate moratorium on large-scale livestock and poultry animal confinement facilities. The practice of growing animals in large, confinement factory farms that increase health threats to animals should be discontinued. The animals should be treated with dignity and respect as should the humans that tend them. U The internationally accepted precautionary principle should be adhered to to avoid environmental harm from antibiotic resistance in bacteria. The sustainability and safety of our food and health systems should be ensured without harm to the environment. U Meat produced with the use of antibiotics should be so labeled. Eaters have a right to know the conditions in which their food is grown. The Most Reverend Raymond L. Burke, Roman Catholic Bishop of LaCrosse and President of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference cautioned at the December 2000 NCRLC-sponsored National Leadership Summit on Food and Agricultural Policy, …[T]he constant administration of antibiotics…to combat the inherently unhealthy nature of [animal] confinements,…without regard for the full results is and will…corrupt nature which inherently produces life and sustains it, and will turn it into a source of disease and death. References available upon request from ncrlc@aol.com or 515-270-2634. For more information: Center for Science in the Public Interest, 1875 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Suite 300, Washington, D.C. 20009; (202) 332-9110; www.cspinet.org/ar/index.html National Catholic Rural Life Conference, "Eating is a Moral Act" campaign, and "A Statement from the Board of Directors of the NCRLC, December 18, 1997." 4625 Beaver Avenue, Des Moines, IA 50310-2199; (515)270-2634; www.ncrlc.com National Conference of Catholic Bishops/United States Catholic Conference, "Economic Justice for All: Pastoral Letter on Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy," 3211 4th Street, N.E., Washington, DC 20017-1194, (202) 541-3000; www.nccbuscc.org Union of Concerned Scientists, 2 Brattle Square, Cambridge, MA 02238; 617-547-5552 www.ucsusa.org