While certain strides have been made in Europe—and less so in the US—against the use of antibiotics in animals who are destined for our dinner plates, it hasn't done a damn bit of good to stop the global demand for more meat. And that means more drugs.Yep, your conscientious decision to buy premium, antibiotic-free meat hasn't done anything to slow the use of drugs in livestock. In fact, according to a new study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), livestock producers worldwide used 63,151 tons of antibiotics in 2010. And it only gets worse from there: The study projects that antimicrobial consumption will rise by 67 percent by 2030.On top of that, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa are all projected to double their current antibiotic use, which is "up to seven times the projected population growth" in those countries, according to the study.You can blame nothing but our unstoppable craving for meat. Global meat production has skyrocketed over the past half-century, with 78 million tonnes of meat being produced per year in 1963 to 308 million tonnes in 2013. That year, the world's cattle population was 1,494 million animals—up 54 percent from 50 years earlier—while chickens increased from 4.1 billion to 21.7 billion in the same period.More meat, more bacteria-killing drugs—what's the problem?The antibiotics used in the livestock industry serve a dual purpose. Not only do they protect each precious farm animal from kicking the bucket before they can be ground into profitable plastic-wrapped protein, they help them grow even bigger. It during in the 1950s that some farmers got wise when they noticed dosing their cattle with antibiotics made them put on more weight than usual; in short order, the Food and Drug Administration approved the drugs' use in livestock.The problem is that animals who are not sick and who are routinely fed small doses of antibiotics in order to grow larger can pose a risk to our health. The bacteria naturally present in them can develop into antibiotic-resistant superbugs—the same kind that the US may be inadvertently shipping to Australia via its onions—which are difficult if not impossible to treat when they infect humans. Some scientists even fear that overconsumption of antibiotics will push us into a "post-antibiotic era," when our drugs simply have no effect against the mega-bacteria that have evolved to survive them.And sorry, vegetarians. Even you can't escape the consequences of antibiotics in livestock. After all, a good deal of the manure from the world's billions of meat-making animals is used to help fertilize fields of fruits and vegetables, which can lead to antibiotic resistance in naturally present bacteria in the soil, too.The PNAS study notes that the increase is likely due to the growth of industrial agriculture and the shift to large-scale farms where antibiotic-dosing practices—like those used in the US—are standard. If we all want a chance at steering clear of drug-resistant bugs—which sicken 2 million people in the US alone—stopping the use of antibiotics in healthy animals is a good place to start.
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