THE SERIES
• Sunday: For more than a century, beef has been a vibrant, though volatile, force in the Kansas economy.
• Monday: Kansas cattlemen are lukewarm to a federal plan to track the history of their animals as a way to protect the beef supply.
• Tuesday: In answer to the threat of terrorist activity, Kansas feedlots beef up their security.
• Wednesday: Kansas packing plants tighten security and increase scrutiny of those they hire, many of whom are immigrants.
• Thursday: Perceived threats to the national food supply have prompted some consumers to look for local providers they know and trust.
• Friday: Millions of dollars are being invested to protect the $6 billion Kansas beef industry from natural or intentional threats.
Antibiotic use in cattle remains consumer concern
Dec. 12, 2006
Michael Strand
The Salina Journal
Just as in humans, the use of antibiotics quickly can help a sick cow return to the pink of health.
But in the cattle industry, that isn't the only use of antibiotics.
Since the 1950s, it's been common to give so-called "subtherapeutic" doses to cattle throughout much of their lives, a regimen that can lead to an additional 3 percent to 5 percent weight gain.
That use of antibiotics has sparked some concern.
Susan Prolman, Washington, D.C., a representative of the Union of Concerned Scientists' Food and Environment Program, said routine nontherapeutic use of antibiotics is a threat to public health, because it helps evolve a resistance to drugs.
That resistance would make those drugs ineffective for treating illnesses.
"We don't oppose therapeutic use for a sick animal that's been diagnosed," she said of antibiotics. "Our concern is about routinely adding it to food and water, to gain weight faster."
Antibiotics are widely used in cattle, especially once they come to the crowded conditions of a feedlot, said Larry Hollis, a cattle veterinarian with Kansas State University Research and Extension.
Cattle, he said, naturally have several types of bacteria that live in their noses that can lead to pneumonia.
"They're closely related bacteria," he said. "We can find them in most cattle, and the cow is perfectly normal unless stressed -- from being transported, weaned, being in a feedlot."
That makes risk assessment -- predicting how cattle will react -- an important part of the decision whether to administer antibiotics as a preventive tool, he said.
"We would like to not have to use antibiotics," Hollis said, but that's largely because of the expense.
When treating sick cattle, the most likely problem is antibiotic residue remaining in the meat when it hits store shelves.
The federal Food and Drug Administration requires waiting periods between the last dose of an antibiotic and slaughter -- 10 days for penicillin, for example.
Hollis said the rule isn't always obeyed.
"People are people. You'll always find someone to cut a corner," he said.
Most frequently, he said, that corner-cutting occurs when cattle from dairy herds are culled and end up as hamburger.
"That's where we have the most violations," he said.
But even advocacy groups working to reduce or eliminate the use of antibiotics in livestock aren't so much worried about drug residues in meat as they are that constant low-level use contributes to resistance to the drugs.
Numerous studies, including one in 2004 by the federal Government Accountability Office, have found specific instances where widespread use of an antibiotic has been followed by large jumps in the portion of bacteria in both humans and livestock resistant to a drug.
That problem can't be pinned entirely on agriculture.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest states that although agriculture use is a problem, human medical use of antibiotics "is probably the major contributor to the emergence of antibiotic resistance ..."
According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as many as half of all human antibiotic prescriptions, and somewhere between one-quarter and one-half of those given in hospitals, are unneeded.
"There's not a limitless supply of antibiotics waiting to be discovered," Prolman said. "New ones are often cousins of existing ones and may have the same resistance."
And while basics such as proper handling and cooking of the meat can keep a person from ingesting any bacteria, including resistant strains, that's not the end of the story.
That 2004 General Accounting Office report noted, "Resistant bacteria may also be spread to fruits, vegetables, and fish products through soil, well water, and water run-off contaminated by waste material from animals harboring these bacteria."
Ben Cohen, an attorney for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, notes that the recent national recall of contaminated spinach might have been a result of that prediction coming true.
"The strain (of E. coli) was particularly virulent," Cohen said.
