Do You Know What’s in Your Meat?

The FDA finally decided to tell (or politely ask) animal farmers to voluntarily stop playing Darwin.

For decades animal farmers have been pumping our meat with antibiotics – adding the drugs to their feed and sometimes even their water.

The FDA wrote on their website this week that they are “implementing a voluntary plan with industry to phase out the use of certain antibiotics for enhanced food production.”

Journalist Kent Sepkowitze of the Daily Beast calls the FDA’s effort “certainly welcomed, even if a little late and a little tepid.”

The effects of these drugs are largely unknown; though it was discovered in the 1950s that antibiotics caused these animals to grow larger, meatier, and therefore produce a greater profit.

All sounds good, right? And it was, until it was discovered that the increased use of antibiotics may be linked to adverse health effects. Young girls have been getting their periods very young and maturing at a rapid rate [Source:LiveScience]. And more recently, drug-resistant bacteria have been traced back to certain stubborn illnesses, like recurring UTI’s in women [Source: The Atlantic].

Farmers have essentially created a product (our animal meat) that is ‘filtered’ of disease and disease-causing bacteria. The challenge though, is that some of the bacteria survive, the antibiotic-resistant kind, and that bacterium is then consumed by us and lives in our bodies to cause infection and disease that may become very difficult to treat later on.

The numbers are startling too – studies indicate that roughly 80 percent of antibiotics in the U.S. go into our food. That’s right – 80 percent of antibiotics are being fed to cattle, pigs and chickens, while the remaining 20 percent is being prescribed in the doctor’s office to humans [Source: PolitiFact.com].

So why make the effort voluntary? According to the FDA, the government agency felt this route would be more effective [see the 'Why Voluntary?' section]. Though it is unclear whether this attempt will be effective, it has been suggested by outside groups that allowing veterinarians the control and decision of when to medicate the animals may be the most effective way to police antibiotic usage within the industry [Source:Pew Health].

The new guidelines will take roughly three years to implement and will require a change in food production under the Veterinary Feed Directives. The end goal is for the treatment of sick animals to fall under the authorization of licensed veterinarians only.