Poultry and the Antibiotic Health Crisis

Antibiotic resistance is perhaps the single most important infectious disease threat of our time." -Beth Bell, M.D., Director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, at the US. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

When the United Nations General Assembly holds a special meeting to discuss a looming health crisis, you know the issue is serious. Only a couple of times in the General Assembly's entire history-such as, for AIDs and Ebola-have health issues been addressed in a special session. The issue discussed by the General Assembly in 2016, was the spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria, and the threat this poses to human immune systems.

In just the U.S. alone, two million people a year contract antibiotic resistant infections-tens of thousands of them die, because antibiotic resistance that was unknown just a decade ago, now undermines human immunity on a wide scale. Much of that antibiotic resistance emerged because the agricultural industry has made itself increasingly reliant on these drugs in animal production. An estimated 70% of all antibiotics sold each year, that human medicine relies on, are used in the livestock and poultry industries.

Antibiotic resistance, caused partly by its use on poultry and then its absorption by humans who eat the birds, "makes treatment of bacterial infections harder, increases how long people are sick, and makes it more likely that patients will die. We used to use antibiotics for everything," observed Dr. Jean Patel, deputy director of the office of antimicrobial resis­tance, at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He states: "We really took it for granted that antibiotics would always work, and if they stopped working, we figured we'd just use new antibiotics. But that strategy has fallen apart."

It is from the natural world, from fungi and soil bacteria that we get the chemicals we call antibiotics in the first place, and that chemists then synthesize into what people take for infections. But because bacteria are adaptable, and continue to evolve, they learn how to protect themselves from antibiotic drugs. By using antibiotics in raising chickens and turkeys, the poultry industry continues to contribute to making human's bodies antibiotic resistant.

Studies done from around the world have been making this point since the beginning of the 21st century. For example, the Centre for Science and Environment in India, in 2014, col­lected 70 samples of chicken from the New Delhi region, and tested them for six widely used antibiotics. About half of the chickens tested contained at least one antibiotic, and many of the samples had two or more antibiotic residues present. Some samples had residues of more than 100 micrograms of antibiotic per kilogram of flesh, which is far in excess, by more than 10 times, what should be 'normal' levels in poultry.

The only reason why more chickens didn't contain even higher levels of antibiotic residues was the cost of applying antibiotics in India's poultry industry, which is less of a barrier in wealthier countries like the U.S. and Europe. How much U.S. supermarket chicken and turkey meat is contaminated with antibiotic resistant bacteria, as a result of the overuse of antibiotics in animal husbandry? That was one of the questions the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Agriculture Department set out to answer in a 2013 report on retail meat, which was based on periodic testing of meat products for bacterial contamination.

Scientists at the Environmental Working Group took the data generated by this report and determined that nearly half of all chicken breasts, wings, and thighs tested showed antibiotic resistant bacteria. The contamination result from turkey meat in supermarkets was beyond alarming. Antibiotic resistant bacteria was found in 81 % of all ground turkey sampled.

These meat samples, according to the Environmental Work­ing Group's report analysis, contained "significant amounts of the superbug versions of salmonella and Campylobacter, which together cause 3.6 million cases of food poisoning a year. Moreover, the researchers found that some 53% of raw chicken samples collected in 2011 were tainted with an anti­biotic-resistant form of Escherichia coli, or E. coli, a microbe that normally inhabits feces. Certain strains of E. coli can cause diarrhea, urinary tract infections and pneumonia. The extent of antibiotic-resistant E. coli on chicken is alarming because bacteria readily share antibiotic-resistance genes."

Other worrisome findings include:

1. The federal tests determined that 9% of raw chicken samples and 10% of raw ground turkey sampled from retail supermarkets were tainted with a super­bug version of salmonella bacteria. Antibiotic resis­tance in salmonella is growing fast: of all salmonella microbes found on raw chicken sampled in 2011; the result was that 74% were antibiotic-resistant, compared to less than 50% in 2002. These microbes, frequently found in chicken and turkey and occa­sionally in beef and pork, commonly cause diarrhea and in extreme cases can lead to arthritis.
2. In the same federal tests, a superbug version of the Campylobacter jejuni microbe was detected on 26% of raw chicken pieces. Raw turkey samples contained numerically fewer of these microbes, but 100% of those examined were antibiotic-resistant. The Campylobacter jejuni pathogen is a common cause of diarrhea and in severe cases can trigger an autoimmune disease that results in paralysis and requires intensive care treatment.
3. In 2006 FDA scientists found superbug versions of a particularly troublesome strain of E. coli, responsi­ble for more than six million infections a year in the U.S., on 16% of ground turkey and 13% of chicken. Fully 84% of the E. coli bacteria identified in these tests were resistant to antibiotics.

Equally disturbing, Researchers at Northern Arizona Uni­versity and the Translational Genomics Research Institute discovered that "74% of store-bought raw turkey samples were tainted with Staphylococcus aureus bacteria resistant to at least one antibiotic. Of these staph bacteria, 79% were resistant to three or more types of antibiotics. Staph can cause skin infections in exposed cuts or produce toxins that cause food borne illness." The report continues, "About 20% of the salmonella microbes detected on chicken samples collected in 2002 were resistant to at least three drugs. By 2011, that num­ber had risen to 45%. The proportion of antibiotic-resistant germs among all salmonella found on raw turkey rose from 62% in 2002 to 78% in 2011."

A separate investigation of turkey meat, conducted by Con­sumer Reports in 2013, involved 257 meat samples purchased nationwide. More than half tested positive for fecal bacteria. The magazine reports: "69% of ground turkey samples har­bored Enterococcus, and 60% harbored Escherichia coli. These bugs are associated with fecal contamination. About 80% cause fatal infections." Most of these bacteria were found to be resistant to three or more antibiotic groups.

The Pew Charitable Trusts report concluded with this anal­ysis: "Pharmaceutical makers have powerful financial incen­tives to encourage abuse of antibiotics in livestock operations. In 2011, they sold nearly 30 million pounds of antibiotics for use on domestic food-producing animals, and up 22% over the 2005 sales by weight, according to reports complied by the FDA and the Animal Wellness, an industry group. Today, pharmaceuticals sold for use on food-producing ani­mals amount to nearly 80% of the American antibiotics mar­ket, according to the Pew Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming."

Given these and related contamination findings, EWG sci­entists advise consumers to "assume that all meat is contam­inated with disease-causing bacteria."

Excerpt from Poison Poultry by Brian Clement, PHD, LN

"Antibiotic Resistance: From the Farm to You." Natural Resources Defense Council Fact Sheet. March 20, 2015. www.nrdc.org.

"The Age of the Superbug Is Already Here." Dominique Mosbergen. The Buffington Post. September 20, 2016.

"Eating chicken could make you immune to antibiotics: CSE report." The Economic Times. July 31, 2014.

"Superbugs Invade American Supermarkets." Environmental Working Group. http: //www. ewg. orglmeateatersguide/ super bugs/

"A. E. Waters, T. Contente-Cuomo, J. Buchhagen, C. M. Liu, L. Watson, K. Pearce, J. T. Foster, J. Bowers, E. M. Driebe, D. M. Engelthaler, P. S. Keim, L. B. Price. Multidrug-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus in US Meat and Poultry." Clinical Infectious Diseases, 2011; DOI: 10.1093/cid/cirl81

"Record High Antibiotic Sales for Meat and Poultry Produc­tion." The Pew Charitable Trusts. February 2013. http://www.pew trusts. org/ en/research-and-analysis/analysis/2013 /02 /06/record high-antibiotic-sales-for-meat-and-poultry-production