In 1945, Alexander Fleming discovered the “miracle drug” penicillin. From that point on, the world of medicine rapidly evolved into a fairly efficient treatment based machine. The discovery of antibiotics was a giant game changer. Suddenly, there were magic pills accessible to everyone that cured even the nastiest of diseases. Today, four out of 5 Americans take some form of antibiotic each year. They’ve become the go-to cure, but even Alexander Fleming warned of using antibiotics with such liberty. With increased use of antibiotics comes increased antibiotic resistance amongst the bacteria that cause illnesses in the first place. When taking an antibiotic, the bacteria you’re fighting slowly evolves a resistance to that specific drug. This means that next time you get sick, you have to take an entirely new antibiotic, and the cycle continues until we’re no longer able to engineer a treatment that’s effective. In taking antibiotics willy-nilly, we’ve put ourselves into the center of one of the deadliest arms races known to man, so why would we actively ingest more antibiotics than necessary?
That’s where mass production of meats like beef, poultry and pork come into the conversation. Large food chains like McDonald’s, Subway, even Starbucks, have a high demand for meat. But that kind of demand has limitations. Producing meat in large quantities has its major drawbacks. Generally speaking, farms providing to these companies pack as many animals into a space as possible, because the amount of land required to actually give them space to roam would be too expensive and just too expansive. But packing hundreds or thousands of animals together means an increase of infectious diseases. That’s where antibiotics come into play. In the past, farmers used antibiotics to treat a sick animal, but today antibiotics are used as a preventative method by farmers. They treat their animals with antibiotics before diseases even arrive so that more of their animals live to be harvested for their meat. So what’s the problem with this? If we can produce more meat to feed more people, that should be a good thing right? Not necessarily.
The more and more we pump antibiotics into our pigs, cows, chickens, etc. the more we’re setting ourselves up for the big disease, the one that is fully resistant to all current strains of antibiotics. A mass disease like that amongst our food resource would be devastating. It’s the type of event that one could even call “apocalyptic”, but it’s not that far out there. Not only are bacteria becoming more and more resistant to antibiotics, but it was recently discovered that certain pigs in China have developed antibiotic resistant genes. This means that eventually, our modern medicine won’t even be effective and stronger more resistant bacteria will instantly take advantage.
But besides a potential food shortage, what does rampant antibiotic use really mean for us as consumers? As it currently stands, there is no definitive research as to the affects of consuming antibiotic fed meat, but based on the genetic change in pigs that constantly consume antibiotics, maybe the safest bet would be to stay away from it entirely. In a recent article, several fast food chains were scored based on their use of meats treated with antibiotics and it comes as no surprise that most of them used meats treated with antibiotics. It’s a direct result of having to produce food in mass quantities. So, while eating a food chains like Chipotle or Chili’s may be convenient, we should try to avoid it as much as possible. Not only is the food generally packed with more calories, more fat, and more sugar, it’s also adding to the ever present antibiotic issue. My biggest advice? Eat local when you can. Find meat that comes from small farms that don’t use antibiotics. Understand where your food is coming from and what’s being done to it. It’s the only way to stay healthy in a world with increasing health problems.
