Animals and antibiotics

As American politics, media headlines, and online rhetoric continue to fuel skepticism toward the pharmaceutical industry, one crucial part of the conversation often escapes the spotlight: the undeniable link between pharma and farms.

Most Canadians are likely familiar with current anti-vaccine debates or claims linking everyday medicines like Tylenol to autism — regardless of their scientific credibility. However, fewer are likely aware of a much more credible and consequential issue: that the majority of medically important antibiotics — in this country and on a global scale — are used not to treat humans, but to treat farm animals. In fact, the meat industry is the biggest consumer of antibiotics in the world. And this is causing humans to grow increasingly resistant to these lifesaving medicines.

The issue of antibiotic resistance is so concerning that the World Health Organization has identified it as one of the world’s leading public health and development threats, responsible for an estimated 1.27 million deaths in 2019 (more than HIV/AIDS or malaria) and contributing to nearly five million deaths that year. The Canadian government estimates that 14,000 Canadian deaths were associated with antimicrobial resistant bacteria in 2018 alone.

So how does farming fit into this? Large industrialized farms make up the majority of operations in Canada. Despite what feel-good industry commercials may have us believe, family farms can be and often are factory farms. In these facilities, animals are kept in crowded, unnatural, and often filthy conditions ripe for the spread of diseases. And rather than raise fewer animals in healthier environments, the industry instead relies on routine, preventative dosing of antibiotics to help ensure animals stay just healthy enough to be slaughtered and sold for profit. These subtherapeutic doses are what allow standard low-welfare systems to function and profit without collapsing due to disease.

The result? The meat industry is now responsible for roughly 73 per cent of global antibiotic use. In Canada, farms raising chickens, pigs and cows use about three times more antibiotics than those in the European Union. And where do a lot of these drugs end up? In manure, soil, waterways and ultimately…. us.

Then what? When antibiotics are used excessively, bacteria adapt. They stop responding to the medicines designed to kill them. And antibiotic resistance grows.

Antibiotic resistance is not just an animal welfare issue, it’s a human survival issue. Without effective antibiotics, routine surgeries, cancer treatments and even childbirth can become exponentially more dangerous. The miracle drugs that defined the 20th century could lose their power entirely. All for cheap meat.

Thankfully it doesn’t have to be this way. Europe has proven that progress is possible, with stricter regulations, better hygiene and alternatives such as vaccines and probiotics sharply reducing antibiotic use. And Denmark has not only re-engineered its pig barns with more space and ventilation, cutting antibiotic use by half, it is also actively promoting plant-based alternatives. (Chickpeas don’t need antibiotics.)

Investing over $200 million through its national Action Plan on Plant-Based Foods, Denmark is supporting research, production and consumer uptake of plant-based alternatives, and indirectly cutting the use of drugs in animals. As one 2022 paper published in the journal Science Advances states, in-part: “Preventing zoonotic diseases requires international coordination to reduce the high demand for animal-sourced foods.”

Canada could be making much the same efforts to better regulate the meat, dairy and egg industries, better treat our animals and environment, and better promote plant-based alternatives. The question is whether we’ll act before the drugs that keep both animals and people alive stop working altogether.

Because, as skepticism toward Big Pharma continues to make headlines, we must also acknowledge that some of the industry’s most dangerous impacts aren’t found in our medicine cabinets, but on our dinner plates. The issue of antibiotic resistance isn’t just about drugs, it’s about how and who we farm, what we eat, and whether we’re willing to change before it’s too late.

Jessica Scott-Reid is a Winnipeg-based journalist, as well as the Culture and Disinformation Correspondent for Sentient Media, and a member of the WHS’s Animal Protection Committee.