February 10, 2002

Poultry Industry Quietly Cuts Back on Antibiotic Use

By MARIAN BURROS

he poultry industry has quietly begun to bow to the demands of public health and consumer groups by greatly reducing the antibiotics that are fed to healthy chickens.

Long a mainstay of poultry farming, antibiotics have been justified as a means of preventing infection in chickens as well as enhancing growth. Opponents have bitterly criticized the industry for a strategy that they say contributes to a much larger public health problem: the growing resistance to antibiotics of disease-causing bacteria in humans.

Now it appears that with little fanfare, the industry has begun to acquiesce. Three companies — Tyson Foods, Perdue Farms and Foster Farms, which produce a third of the chicken consumed by Americans each year — say they have voluntarily taken most or all of the antibiotics out of what they feed healthy chickens. In addition, the industry is turning away from an antibiotic used to treat sick birds because it is related to Cipro, the drug used to treat anthrax in humans. Some corporate consumers, including McDonald's, Wendy's and Popeye's, are now refusing to buy chicken that has been treated with it.

But despite the overall decrease in antibiotic use, there is no way for the consumer to know whether one of these companies' chickens has been treated with antiobiotics. This is especially true of drugs used to treat sick chickens, like the Cipro-related antibiotic. Treating a few sick birds requires treating the entire flock, and flocks often number more than 30,000. The only way for consumers to be certain the chickens they buy have not been treated with antibiotics is to purchase those labeled antibiotic-free, or organic.

Many opponents of the prevailing agricultural practices see these developments as a major step toward combating antibiotic resistance. But in the absence of any monitoring by the federal government, some remain skeptical about assertions that antibiotic use has been reduced. Because farmers are not required to report antibiotic use in animals, the reduction cannot be documented.

For more than 20 years, poultry producers have stoutly defended the use of all antibiotics. The National Chicken Council, an industry trade association, maintains that antibiotics have always been used responsibly. "People well aware of antibiotic resistance in the industry are skeptical that we are the root of the problems," Richard Lobb, spokesman for the council, said.

Many public health advocates say the use of antibiotics in poultry causes disease germs to become resistant not only to those drugs but also to the closely related drugs used to treat human diseases. The theory is that stronger, more drug-resistant strains of bacteria grow when competing organisms are killed off. Strong resistance to a drug may cause it and others in its chemical class to become ineffective for treating some diseases.

Experts say that another significant factor in the emergence of drug- resistant bacteria is the overuse of antibiotics in human medicine.

The turnaround on the part of three major companies is a powerful recognition of public health officials' longstanding concerns. Foster Farms says it uses no antibiotics at all, except to treat sick birds. Perdue says it is using only antibiotics that are not the same as or similar to those used in human medicine. Tyson says it has cut back on antibiotics that are similar to those used on humans, and now uses only two when a flock is at risk of disease.

"If they are not using millions of pounds of antibiotics in chickens, there is that much less pressure on disease-causing organisms to develop resistance," said Dr. Margaret Mellon, the director of the food and environment program of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a public advocacy group. "That means the antibiotics will work at lower concentrations."

The three companies, which sell a total of 216 million pounds of chicken a year, have quietly made the changes over the last three to four years, though Mr. Lobb suggested that the trend had been going on longer than that. Dr. Mellon and other leading opponents of animal antibiotics said they were unaware of the new farming practices.

"I was surprised but delighted that companies are making the changes they say they are making," said Rebecca Goldburg, a senior scientist with the organization Environmental Defense. "For many years the animal industry has disregarded or even denied concerns about antibiotic resistance, but this shows they are beginning to take them seriously."

The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that 26.6 millions pounds of antibiotics are used for animals each year, with only 2 million pounds used to treat sick animals. These figures are estimates because farmers can buy many antibiotics without prescriptions.

For the last three years, the European Union has tightly regulated animal antibiotics related to those used in human medicine, which are called medically important. In Denmark, the restrictions have resulted in a drop of about 60 percent in overall use of antibiotics from 1994 to 2000.

"Currently we are not using medically important antibiotics nontherapeutically that would be used in human medicine like penicillin, tetracycline and sulfonamides," said Dr. Hank Engster, vice president of technical services for Perdue. "The primary reason is that we want to make absolutely sure if there is any question that we are in no way, shape or form contributing to antibiotic resistance in humans. We want to make sure there is no overuse."

Tyson says it made the decision for economic reasons. "We looked at the cost-benefit ratio of antibiotics and determined we could just as effectively do it without them," said Ed Nicholson, a company spokesman. "If we can raise birds without doing it, why do it?"

There is no evidence that a reduction in the use of antibiotics for healthy chickens will increase the risk of getting sick from eating them.

On the contrary, the continual use of antibotics makes bacteria more resistant.

While some processors have been reducing such use in healthy chickens, there has been an equally significant effort to ban a newer class of antibiotics, called fluoroquinolones, in chickens that are sick. The chicken drug, which is very similar to Cipro, is called Baytril. Both are manufactured by Bayer A.G.

Even the Food and Drug Administration, which has done little in the past to curb the use of antibiotics in animals, has been trying to ban Baytril since October 2000. Cipro is used to treat not only anthrax but also food-borne illnesses like campylobacteriosis and salmonellosis.

Walt Riker, a spokesman for McDonald's, said the company decided a year ago not to serve chickens that had been treated with fluoroquinolones. "Based on the science and some of the concerns raised and its limited application, it was easy to discontinue the use of it," he said.

Foster Farms does not use fluoroquinolones. Tyson and Perdue still do. Perdue and Foster Farms say fewer than 1 percent of their chickens are treated with any antibiotics because of illnesses.

In December, Keep Antibiotics Working, a coalition dedicated to reducing the use of antibiotics in animals, wrote to 50 poultry producers, telling them about three studies published in October in The New England Journal of Medicine confirming the links between antibiotic overuse and drug-resistant bacteria found in meat and poultry products. The coalition, which includes the Union of Concerned Scientists, Environmental Defense, the Center for Science in the Public Interest and the Natural Resources Defense Council, asked each company to "commit to eliminating the nontherapeutic use of medically important antibiotics in your production practices."

After the Food and Drug Administration gave the poultry industry permission to use fluoroquinolones to treat chickens in 1995, contrary to advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the increase in bacteria resistance among humans rose from almost nothing to about 18 percent. The most recent preliminary government report indicates a reduction in bacterial resistance to about 14 percent, which may be attributed to a reduction in use as processors and purchasers turn away from it.

The Food and Drug Administration says that even though there has been a reduction, the level of resistance is unacceptable. Among those supporting its call for a ban are the American College of Preventive Medicine, the American Medical Association and the American Public Health Association.

But once an animal drug has been approved, it is very difficult to take off the market against a company's wishes. One manufacturer, Abbott Laboratories, agreed immediately to withdraw the product. But Bayer has not and is fighting the proposed ban.

Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, has told Bayer that if it does not voluntarily remove Baytril from the market, he will introduce legislation to ban its use in animals. Representative Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, plans to introduce similar legislation in the House.

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