Lentorama 2022: It Happened on Easter

Day 21: Antibiotic resistance gets a toe hold

On April 9, 1950, biochemists Thomas H. Jukes and Robert Stokstad announced that they discovered that adding antibiotics to animal feed leads to increased growth.  They found that using a 400 to 1 ratio of animal feed to antibiotics caused a 50 percent increase in size in piglets, with smaller gains in chicks and calves. This was a boon to the pharmaceutical market as it opened up a new market, and to livestock producers who were always looking to increase yield. 

But it's probably less of a boon to the rest of us, as the continual use of antibiotics kills off the susceptible bacteria, leaving only resistant strains, which then fill the niche opened up by the death of those other bacteria. Growers then have to move to new antibiotics and repeat this process all over again. Eventually you get bacteria resistant to most antibiotics, which can then spread through animals (and the humans who raise and eat them). 

The European Union banned the practice in 1999, while in the US the Food and Drug Administration has released several guidance letters trying to reduce the practice, but an outright ban has yet to be implemented.