Is Factory Farming Creating a Human Health Threat?

At the end of October, the European Union Parliament voted to ban all prophylactic uses of antibiotics on factory farms. The EU banned the practice of using antibiotics to enhance livestock growth back in 2006, but this decision would put an end to all prophylactic antibiotic use. The European Commission has recently responded the the Parliament’s vote by creating a five-year action plan on antimicrobial resistance that proposes massive cutbacks in antibiotic use on EU farms.

The concern with widespread antibiotic use on factory farms is that it creates to antibiotic-resistant superbugs. These superbugs can be transmitted to humans and create outbreaks of untreatable diseases. In the long run, overuse of antibiotics could lead to them becoming completely ineffective. We would find ourselves in a post-antibiotic world in which common infections are fatal.

On November 4th Maryn McKenna published an article on the Wired Science blogs titled, “Government Health Agency Agrees Mega-Farms are a Health Risk (In the UK)”. In the article McKenna discusses the how the Health Protection Agency in England recently rejected the zoning application for a factory hog farm because it would put humans at risk due to exposure to drug-resistant organisms. (More specific information on this proposed farm, along with the arguments expressed against it, can be found here.) McKenna points out that it’s surprising and refreshing to hear the issue laid down in such clear terms by a government agency, though this information should be obvious considering the large amounts of research supporting it. (McKenna attached this PDF to her article as proof.)

Another article on this same subject was published in the Farmer’s Guardian titled “Antimicrobials: Is intensive farming fueling a health crisis?”. This article discusses a new report done by the Soil Association, Compassion in World Farming, and Sustain. This report links antimicrobial resistance to factory farming and proposes huge reductions in antibiotic usage on farms. The article acknowledges the growing concern from medical professionals about drug-resistant bacteria, but questions the study’s claim that factory farming is to blame. The study notes that a lot of antibiotic resistance is caused by human antibiotic use, and the article uses this to discredit the evidence pointing to factory farming. The article also points out that the authors of the study all had anti-factory farming agendas. The author speculated that these agendas could have skewed the results.

The Farmer’s Guardian article appears to be biased in favor of factory farms. The author does a good job of objectively describing the dangers of antibiotic resistant diseases and the results of the study, but they then go on to discredit or downplay a lot of the information. They describe the evidence as being relatively limited, and question the credibility of the findings. Most of the quotations they cite against the study, however, come from people in farming organizations.

The Wired Science article was more objective, but still appeared to be biased against factory farming. The author used strong language and bold claims to get her point across. She only discussed the opposing argument briefly at the end of her article, and did so in way that made critics appear uneducated.

It is difficult to find unbiased articles discussing issues related to factory farming. Major news sources don’t generally cover these issues and the people who do cover them often have specific agendas. The people writing about factory farming issues are, for the most part, either strongly for or strongly against factory farming, and these biases are clearly expressed in their writing.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk