Few issues affecting production agriculture are as overtly controversial as the intersection of animal health—meaning, the use (or misuse) of antibiotics—and food safety—meaning, the incidence of foodborne illness.
While every constituency involved insists that both animal health and food safety are of paramount importance, the use of pharmaceuticals to promote the former and support the latter is considered controversial by some.
In the interests of resolving that dilemma, a new report from the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology titled “The Direct Relationship between Animal Health and Food Safety Outcomes” makes the case that, far from being a negative, judicious use of sub-therapeutic antibiotics may positively affect the health of both animals and humans.
The reason? A sort of “trickle-down effect” on animal health factors that impact meat and poultry quality and safety. Here’s how the C.A.S.T. commentary phrased it:
“In addition to overtly ill animals, there is a growing body of evidence showing that chronically, previously, and not visibly ill animals are more likely to be contaminated with foodborne pathogens after processing in the abattoir (slaughterhouse). These animals, however, may go unnoticed during ante-mortem (live animal) inspection, and thus questions arise concerning the potential impacts of these animals entering the food supply on public health risk from foodborne pathogens.”
Wordy, but pretty clear in t its implications: Animal herds where low-level antibiotics are used tend to be healthier—at least in the ways that otherwise might increase the risk of food-borne contamination—than livestock raised without what industry likes to call “health maintenance products.”
It makes sense. With postmortem examinations, inspectors can observe signs of disease or contamination that are clearly correlated with public health problems, as well as identify zoonotic conditions known to infect people. They can order the contamination removed, the carcass held for veterinary examination or simply condemn the carcass.
Although they can squawk about its intensity and application, even the industry’s fiercest critics can’t complain about the overt objectives of visual meat and poultry inspection: Identify the signs of animal disease and make sure those carcasses don’t enter the food chain unless significant mitigation is possible.
The subclinical conundrum
More problematic—and controversial—is the issue of so-called subclinical illness in livestock, which a mountain of evidence suggests will measurably increase the risk of carcass contamination. Consider the following:
- Animals that are stressed or immuno-compromised by low-grade illness are more likely to be infected with foodborne pathogens, especially salmonella.
- Animals with abscesses or other lesions require extra trimming that likely increases the likelihood of cross-contamination.
- Certain conditions increase the chance of human error during harvesting, such as an adhesion that causes intestines to stick to carcass and causes leakage of intestinal contents during evisceration.
The C.A.S.T. commentary mentions several other examples, but the point is that animals sent to a packing plant with sub-clinical problems can increase the risk of cross-contamination, which is the No. 1 problem linked to food-borne pathogens in the meat and poultry supply.
Both activist critics of the industry, as well as the risk-adverse public, feel justified in demanding pathogen-free food products. Anyone who’s spent more than five minutes studying the basic principles of microbiology knows that’s simply not possible. But the best way to at least approach 100% pathogen-free, zero-risk raw meat and poultry products is process control—preventing the transfer of intestinal pathogens to the surface of the carcass.
That’s the key, and that’s the biggest challenge facing meatpacking and poultry processing companies.
Those firms face the threat of litigation and financial penalties when food-borne outbreaks are traced to their products. They stand to lose customers and market share even in the wake of relatively minor outbreaks, partly because media reports of recall tonnage are so wildly inflated and secondarily because of the aforementioned risk aversion consumers have been trained to embrace, thanks to the very same media members who cover the food industry beat.
Here’s the problem: As C.A.S.T. details, the use of antibiotics mitigates the complications tied to low-level illnesses often invisible to even the best inspectors. But how do you communicate that linkage to policymakers and the public? To put an even finer point on it, how does industry calculate the risk-benefit trade-off between on-farm, sub-therapeutic antibiotic usage—which arguably increases the threat of resistant bacteria that can and do compromise human health—and mitigation of sub-clinical illness in market-ready livestock, which can and does improve the odds that processors can approach the goal of marketing risk-free raw meat and poultry products?
I wish I had a short answer to that lengthy question, but I do know this: Unless and until every industry segment from live side to further processing unties around messaging that tries to educate the public and the policymakers about that risk-benefit equation, the controversy surrounding antibiotic use in animal agriculture will continue to move in only one direction: A ban on sub-therapeutic use.
That won’t be good for anyone—producers, processors or the consuming public.
Or animals, it turns out.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Dan Murphy, a veteran food-industry journalist and commentator.
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