[Pharmwaste] Antibiotic Runoff

DeBiasi,Deborah dldebiasi at deq.virginia.gov
Tue Sep 18 12:23:12 EDT 2007


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/opinion/18tue3.html?th&emc=th

September 18, 2007

Editorial

Antibiotic Runoff 

One of the persistent problems of industrial agriculture is the
inappropriate use of antibiotics. It's one thing to give antibiotics to
individual animals, case by case, the way we treat humans. But it's a
common practice in the confinement hog industry to give antibiotics to
the whole herd, to enhance growth and to fight off the risk of disease,
which is increased by keeping so many animals in such close quarters.
This is an ideal way to create organisms resistant to the drugs. That
poses a risk to us all.

A recent study by the University of Illinois makes the risk even more
apparent. Studying the groundwater around two confinement hog farms,
scientists have identified the presence of several transferable genes
that confer antibiotic resistance, specifically to tetracycline. There
is the very real chance that in such a rich bacterial soup these genes
might move from organism to organism, carrying the ability to resist
tetracycline with them. And because the resistant genes were found in
groundwater, they are already at large in the environment.

There are two interdependent solutions to this problem, and hog
producers should embrace them both. The first solution - the least
likely to be acceptable in the hog industry - is to ban the wholesale,
herdwide use of antibiotics. The second solution is to continue to
tighten the regulations and the monitoring of manure containment
systems. The trouble, of course, is that there is no such thing as
perfect containment. 

The consumer has the choice to buy pork that doesn't come from factory
farms. The justification for that kind of farming has always been
efficiency, and yet, as so often happens in agriculture, the argument
breaks down once you look at all the side effects. The trouble with
factory farms is that they are raising more than pigs. They are raising
drug-resistant bugs as well. 





Deborah L. DeBiasi
Email:   dldebiasi at deq.virginia.gov
WEB site address:  www.deq.virginia.gov
Virginia Department of Environmental Quality
Office of Water Permit Programs
Industrial Pretreatment/Toxics Management Program
Mail:          P.O. Box 1105, Richmond, VA  23218 (NEW!)
Location:  629 E. Main Street, Richmond, VA  23219
PH:         804-698-4028
FAX:      804-698-4032



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