Does adding routine antibiotics to animal feed pose a serious risk to human health?
- 9 July 2013
- Vol. 347 (jul09 3), f4214
- https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.f4214
Abstract
You cannot dispute the warning of England’s chief medical officer, Sally Davies, that antibiotic resistance is one of modern health’s greatest threats. Also beyond dispute is her analysis of its causes—the lack of new drugs combined with massive overuse of existing antibiotics. What physicians and policy makers generally overlook, however, is the critical role played by the ongoing overuse of antibiotics in livestock and poultry production. Enforceable measures to reduce this overuse must be core to any effort to avert the coming catastrophe. Because meat production is global in nature, these measures must be implemented nationally and supranationally.This publication has 7 references indexed in Scilit:
- Get pigs off antibioticsNature, 2012
- Antibiotics in Feed Induce Prophages in Swine Fecal MicrobiomesmBio, 2011
- Selection of Resistant Bacteria at Very Low Antibiotic ConcentrationsPLoS Pathogens, 2011
- Antibiotic Management of Staphylococcus aureus Infections in US Children's Hospitals, 1999–2008PEDIATRICS, 2010
- Hospital and Societal Costs of Antimicrobial‐Resistant Infections in a Chicago Teaching Hospital: Implications for Antibiotic StewardshipClinical Infectious Diseases, 2009
- A Multinational Survey of Risk Factors for Infection with Extended‐Spectrum β‐Lactamase–Producing Enterobacteriaceae in Nonhospitalized PatientsClinical Infectious Diseases, 2009
- Nasal Colonization of Humans with Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) CC398 with and without Exposure to PigsPLOS ONE, 2009