California poised to be 1st state to outlaw human antibiotics in livestock

This has been the year of antibiotics awareness in the food industry. Giant food corporations like McDonald’s, Tyson, Foster Farms and Costco all announced plans to phase out meat raised with antibiotics.

But these efforts pale in comparison to pending California legislation that aims to strictly limit antibiotic use in agriculture and, according to public health experts, could reduce the number of deaths and illnesses caused by drug-resistant bacteria. With the passage of SB27, which Gov. Jerry Brown is expected to sign by Sunday, California would be the first state in the nation to outlaw the routine use of human antibiotics in livestock.

Supporters say it could have a wide-ranging influence.

“California is a big agricultural state, and it often is a bellwether for the nation. We often see the FDA following suit or other states following suit,” said Elisa Odabashian of Consumers Union, a supporter of the bill, speaking of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Consumers Union estimates that 70 percent of medically important antibiotics — the kind used in human medicine — are given to livestock in the United States. The overuse of these antibiotics to promote growth and prevent disease in food-producing animals is seen as a major contributor to the 2 million illnesses and 23,000 deaths the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports are caused by drug-resistant bacteria each year in the United States.

“When (SB27) is signed, California will be leading the nation in demonstrating what prudent drug use can look like,” said Michael Payne, a veterinarian, researcher and education coordinator at the Western Institute of Food Safety and Security at UC Davis. “This bill will help protect the effectiveness of antibiotics not only for people but for animals as well.”

Brown enables compromise

Consumers Union and other environmental and public health groups opposed an earlier version of the bill until the governor helped negotiate stricter guidelines on when antibiotics may be used for prevention, which helped the two sides reach a compromise. Meat and egg producers from outside the state will not be affected by the new law, which would go into effect in January 2018.

“We supported the legislation. We think it has the flexibility we can work with,” said Bill Mattos, president of the California Poultry Federation, whose members include Foster Farms. He does not expect the law to increase poultry prices.

Sales of medically important antibiotics to livestock producers went up 20 percent from 2009 to 2013, according to the FDA, just as Americans have become increasingly concerned by their use. According to research conducted for the U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance, 48 percent of consumers are “uncomfortable” with antibiotic use in animal production, and 53 percent of consumers frequently wonder if the food they buy is safe.

Cost-saving measure

Currently, livestock producers across the country can purchase over-the-counter antibiotics in the form of feed, injections and pills. In what’s called subtherapeutic antibiotic use, low daily or routine doses of antibiotics can be used to promote growth, which reduces feed costs. Antibiotics can also be routinely added to feed or water to help prevent disease or to directly treat an infection.

Public health advocates say that medically important antibiotics are used too often in all these cases; even a pig stricken with pneumonia doesn’t always have to be treated with the highest class of human antibiotics.

A bill introduced in California in 2009 that proposed banning antibiotics use for nontherapeutic reasons was defeated, largely because of lobbying against it by the agriculture industry. Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., has been trying to pass a similar federal bill since 2009 with no success. But an influential 2013 CDC report that linked antibiotic use in agriculture to deadly drug-resistant infections was a tipping point in public awareness of the problem, which led to the industry’s willingness to make changes to antibiotics practices.

The FDA has changed its guidance on the use of antibiotics in medicated feed, which will be implemented next year. However, critics say the change is too lenient because it deals only with subtherapeutic use and not preventative use. Also, it deals only with medicated feed, whereas California’s new law requires food producers to get a prescription from a veterinarian for any form of medically important antibiotics.

‘Smallest gun in the arsenal’

“Ideally what will happen with this relationship is the veterinarian will help guide the producer in the prevention of a disease and treatment with the smallest gun in the arsenal, or the best drug for that illness,” said Payne of UC Davis, who provided scientific background on antibiotic resistance to the group that drafted SB27.

When bacteria that animals carry are exposed to antibiotics too often, they develop resistance to those drugs. The bacteria get carried into the general population through the meat, which can become infected when the animal is slaughtered or when traces of bacteria get washed into the environment through waterways, the soil or manure.

“We all live in a big bacterial world, and they travel around. Bacteria don’t necessarily recognize the difference between a hospital and a farm and a house,” said David Wallinga, a physician and senior health officer at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Wallinga and other supporters of this law emphasize that it does not outlaw antibiotics used to treat sick animals. That differs from meat that is labeled organic, which can never have been treated with antibiotics. If an animal requires antibiotic treatment, it can no longer be considered organic.

Companies making changes

Large meat companies like Tyson, Foster Farms and Perdue have recently reported phasing out the use of medically important antibiotics, especially in chicken. Still, Consumers Union and others have raised concerns about how they’re often replaced by other classes of antibiotics, called ionophores, to promote growth and prevent disease, which some research has shown can lead to the growth of other kinds of drug-resistant bacteria.

Several California ranchers have been antibiotic-free for decades. Mark Pasternak and his wife, veterinarian Myriam Kaplan-Pasternak, have raised pigs without routine antibiotics at Devil’s Gulch Ranch in Nicasio, West Marin County, since 1971.

“If I ran antibiotics through the water, I’d probably do quite a bit better,” said Pasternak, who sells pork, lamb, rabbit and quail at farmers’ markets and in restaurants. “If you give animals a bunch of antibiotics, they grow faster and stay healthier. The individual may be healthier, but the planet may not be.”

While Pasternak supports the bill, he thinks it’s better if pressure comes from the marketplace rather than government.

“We are lucky in the Bay Area that we have the kinds of customers that are looking at the long term and not the short term,” he said.