With a few exceptions, factory farming of commercial dairy, egg, meat, and seafood operations heavily relies on antibiotics. This is because farmed animals usually live in overcrowded and inevitably unsanitary conditions. The WHO recommends that antibiotics should not be routinely used to prevent disease across groups of farm animals. This notwithstanding, the practice remains widespread on cruel factory farms with as much as 80% of the world’s antibiotics used on farm animals.

The superbug crisis poses a threat to all forms of life. The phenomenon is increasingly receiving attention from the World Health Organization, the United Nations(UN), the  Group of Twenty (G20) among other international bodies. Annually, more than 700,000 people die from superbugs where antibiotics are ineffective in treating infections. This number is projected to reach up to 10 million by 2050.

Superbugs are pervasive in all parts of the world. They cause infections such as pneumonia, gonorrhoea, urinary tract infections, blood stream infection, skin disorders as well as several foodborne diseases. Antibiotics are one of the last lines of defence to keep patients alive when other treatment for conditions like respiratory infections has failed. However, superbugs are increasingly rendering most of these antibiotics useless.

 “Bacterial infections that were treatable for decades are no longer responding to antibiotics, even the newer ones,” said Dr. Dennis Dixon, a National Institutes of Health (NIH) expert in bacterial and fungal diseases. “Scientists have been trying to keep ahead of newly emerging drug-resistant bacteria by developing new drugs, but it’s a tough task.

Adding to that, Dr. Jane Knisely, who supervises studies of drug-resistant bacteria at NIH  noted the need to make the best use of the drugs, as there aren’t many in the antibiotic development pipeline. “It’s important to understand the best way to use these drugs to increase their effectiveness and decrease the chances of resistance to emerge,” she said.

Animals on factory farms are cruelly caged, painfully mutilated and babies are ripped from their mothers at a young age causing unthinkable suffering. Routine antibiotic use masks animal suffering on factory farms and prevents stressed animals from getting sick.

“We can see an end to cruel factory farming in our lifetime”, said Jacqueline Mills, Head of Farming, at World Animal Protection. “No new factory farms should be built. Instead, the food industry needs to embrace a humane and sustainable future: predominantly plant-based diets, and remaining farm animals in genuinely high welfare systems where they can have good lives”.

REFERENCE

Information from www.worldanimalprotection.org, www.newsinhealth.nih.gov www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/infectious-diseases/expert-answers/superbugs/, https://gardp.org/what-we-do/superbugs  was used in this report