Written by: Elizabeth
Oath of God Ministries

Pharmaceutical Research meets Animal Husbandry: The pharmaceutical companies have decided that finding antibiotics for humans does not fit their investment portfolio. They are backing out of research which combats infectious disease. 

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a federal agency, estimated that some two million people in the United States are getting sick from antibiotic-resistant infections every year, causing some 23,000 deaths. Further, the agency cautioned that those numbers were minimum estimates based on conservative assumptions.”(1)

America is entering a post-antibiotic era which leaves people at great risk to superbugs since 20% of infections in US hospitals involve multidrug-resistant bacteria, according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In an interview with Frontline on August 29, 2013 Charles Knirsch, VP of Clinical Research at Pfizer defended his company’s decision to back out of further research in the area of antibiotics, “These are not ruthless decisions. These are portfolio decisions about how we can serve medical need in the best way. …We want to stay in the business of providing new therapeutics for the future. Our investors require that of us, I think society wants a Pfizer to be doing what we do in 20 years. We make portfolio management decisions.” (2)

The pharmaceutical companies have every right to make financial or portfolio decisions which benefit their stock holders. So what can be done to reduce the risks of multi-drug resistant bacteria causing lethal superbugs or widespread pestilence in the future?  Let’s review what the experts are saying on this matter.

Dr. Arjun Srinivasan, Associate Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated, “The more you use an antibiotic, the more you expose a bacteria to an antibiotic, the greater the likelihood that resistance to that antibiotic is going to develop. So the more antibiotics we put into people, we put into the environment, we put into livestock, the more opportunities we create for these bacteria to become resistant. …We also know that we’ve greatly overused antibiotics and in overusing these antibiotics, we have set ourselves up for the scenario that we find ourselves in now, where we’re running out of antibiotics.”(3)

What might be a contributor to these superbugs? The animal factory farms feed inordinately high quantities of antibiotics to the animals. Animal right activists have been protesting these unsafe drugs for decades.  According to APUA, Tufts Medical Campus, Boston MA “Most antimicrobials used in food animal production are the same as, or closely related to, drugs used in human medicine.”(4)  The reason for concern is that humans consume the meat from these animals.  APUA adds, “Current antimicrobial use policy for animals in the US differs from policy enacted in the European Union, which has banned the use of some antimicrobials for growth promotion on the farm.  Also of concern is the farm use of antimicrobials of critical importance in human medicine, such as fluoroquinolones and third (or higher) generation cephalosporins.  Once the prevalence of antimicrobial resistance in a population reaches a certain level, reversal of the problem becomes extremely difficult.”(5)

These antibiotics also bring strong profit to the corporate factory farm owners since most animals will gain as much as 3 percent more weight when antibiotics are regularly administered. In other words, antibiotics are being used to boost animal growth in healthy animals. There are other reasons as well.  According to Congresswoman, Rosa DeLauro, “80 percent of the antibiotics sold in the United States are given to “healthy animals”, often to “overcompensate for crowded and unsanitary conditions and unsanitary conditions. As a result of overuse, bacteria become resistant to antibiotics, and antibiotic-resistant infections kill tens of thousands of Americans every year.(6)  For decades the animal activists have sited crowded conditions which has contributed to cruelty, lack of care and an overuse of antibiotics.

Sarah Borron, a researcher with Food and Water Watch (FWW), a watchdog group, warns, “Farmers still give low doses of antibiotics to entire herds for long periods, and that still promotes the development of antibiotic resistance.  Any time antibiotics are used for routine disease prevention, that’s a sign that something else is wrong with the livestock system.”(7)

Steroids are yet another problem. According to Dr. Michael Wayne, PhD, “Each year, U.S. farmers raise some 36 million beef cattle. 99% of all beef cattle entering feedlots in the United States are given steroidal hormone implants to promote faster growth. A large percentage of poultry and pigs are also fed these drugs.”(8) Dr. Wayne continues by listing (6) different anabolic steroids given to animals entering the feedlots. They are “three natural steroids (estradiol, testosterone, and progesterone), and three synthetic hormones (the estrogen compound zeranol, the androgen trenbolone acetate, and progestin melengestrol acetate). So this means that when you eat meat, chicken or pork, and drink milk, you are consuming unsafe drugs that weren’t prescribed to you.”(9)

Antibiotics are only the tip of the iceberg. Children are consuming any number of other drugs that are either directly injected into farm animals or are food laced and the activists have been protesting the unsafe use of steroids and growth hormones in animals for decades. 

Footnotes:

(1) Drug Makers Agree to U.S. Ban on Livestock Antibiotics, Carey L. Biron, Inter Press Service, 5/14/14
(2) Dr. Charles Knirsch: “These Are Not Ruthless Decisions” Frontline’s 10/22/2013 edited transcript Hunting the Nightmare Bacteria, 08/29/13 interview with Pfizer’s VP of Clinical Research, Charles Knirsch
(3) “The End of Antibiotics, Period”, The American Conservative, Ron Dreher’s 10/26/13
(4) APUA, Science of Resistance: Antibiotics in Agriculture – The Risk to Human Health, website
(5) APUA, Science of Resistance: Antibiotics in Agriculture – The Risk to Human Health, website
(6) FDA’s Plan to Address Antimicrobial Resistance Falls Short of the MarkCongresswoman Rosa DeLauro, 3rd District of Connecticut, website
(7) Drug Makers Agree to U.S. Ban on Livestock Antibiotics, Carey L. Biron, Inter Press Service, 5/14/14
(8) The Meat You Eat: 09/25/2009, Michael Wayne, PhD, Filed under Diet and Nutrition, Meat
(9) The Meat You Eat: 09/25/2009, Michael Wayne, PhD, Filed under Diet and Nutrition, Meat