What We Eat is NOT a Personal Choice: Antibiotic Resistance
This is probably the number one phrase people say when confronted about a diet including animal products.
“Diet is a personal choice.”
That statement is absolutely, 100% false.
Our diet is one of the most significant ways we impact other people.
Our dietary choices profoundly impact the climate crisis, pandemic potential, antibiotic resistance, world hunger, and the lives of innocent animals.
Our diet is one of the most IMpersonal choices we make everyday.
In this blog, we’ll explore the consequences of dietary choices on the growing threat of antibiotic resistance. Stay tuned for part III which will explore the consequences associated with world hunger and sentient life.
Antibiotic Resistance
What comes to mind when you think about farmed animals?
For many, it’s a picturesque scene with cows, sheep, goats, and chickens peacefully grazing green pastures.
That may have been true 100 years ago, but it certainly is not true now.
The 20th century saw the rise of industrialized agriculture. In 1900, 40% of the US population lived on a farm.
The life of 40% of Americans in 1900.
Now in 2023, only about 1% of the US population is employed in the farming industry.
At the same time, the US population grew from 76.3 million people in 1900 to 334 million in 2023.
So in order to produce food for a population that would increase by 450% with 39% less workers, technology had to innovate.
Modern farming technology that can feed a modern growing population.
And this is a good thing! Being able to produce more food with less workers is a good thing. That opens up so many employment opportunities in other industries, which leads to more technological innovation and general societal progress.
Technological innovation in agriculture is good. Yes.
But…
The “innovation” that happened in the animal agriculture sector is terrifyingly dangerous.
In order to produce more food with less workers, and critically - less land, CAFOs were invented.
CAFOs are Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations. CAFOs were originally pioneered in chicken farming in the 1950s, and adopted by the rest of animal agriculture by the 1970s and 1980s.
A single chicken farm can raise over 500,000 broiler (meat) chickens in one year.
Animals are crowded together to produce maximum product on minimal resources. The more “product” a company can produce from the same space, the more profit they reap.
If you’ve ever seen a CAFO, it’s literally hell on earth.
In CAFOs, animals are forced to live in their own waste and the waste of others for their entire lives. They are literally living covered in feces for months or years - in some cases.
Dairy cows “swimming” through feces that is over 12 inches deep.
As you can imagine, this is incredibly unhygienic, and leads to mortality rates as high as 28%. Which in turn, decreases profit for food companies.
So what’s their solution?
Hint: it’s not to make the living conditions cleaner.
It’s to put antibiotics in the animal feed.
Yeah, they figure that they can combat high mortality rates of animals living for months and/or years covered in feces with a steady stream of antibiotics. Antibiotics also increase growth rate, which increases profit.
In fact, 80% of antibiotics in the US are fed to farmed animals. Not humans.
That’s staggering. 80% of ALL antibiotics are given to farmed animals in the US. Not humans.
Pigs crowded together inside sheds with poor ventilation. The perfect breeding ground for bacterial infections.
Bacteria are living things. They evolve to their environment. They evolve to overcome challenges, such as antibiotics.
This is so well documented that many countries, including the European Union, have placed legislative restrictions on the use of antibiotics in farming.
They know that “the practice of medicine and the state of public health would be catastrophically affected” if antibiotics were to become ineffective.
The US, however, has not. We still feed 80% of our antibiotics to animals in CAFOs.
And the bacteria are fighting back. They are becoming resistant to antibiotics.
According to the World Health Organization, “Some types of bacteria that cause serious infections in humans have already developed resistance to most or all of the available treatments, and there are very few promising options in the research pipeline.”
Dairy cows covered in feces at a CAFO.
Back in 1900, the average life expectancy of a US male was 46 years. This is due to various factors. But by and large, the leading cause of death for most Americans in 1900 was infection. More specifically, pneumonia and influenza.
Then in 1928, Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin. And the world was forever changed. Suddenly, infection didn’t mean certain death. We could fight back against acute disease.
Fast forward to 2023, and infection isn’t even in the top 15 leading killers of Americans. And the average life expectancy has soared to 76.
This is in huge part due to our sterilized world, powered by antibiotics. Antibiotics render a whole class of infections and diseases powerless against medicine.
But what happens if antibiotics no longer work?
We will be catapulted back to a pre-antibiotic era, where we could be at risk for lethal infection during surgeries, dental procedures, or even a scraped knee.
Modern medicine would be set back 100 years. Millions of people would die of simple infections that could have easily been eradicated with antibiotics.
…And all because we want to eat meat, dairy, and eggs. Food we don’t even need to be healthy. The largest organization of dietitians in the world has certified a plant based diet as healthy and nutritionally adequate for all stages of life, including childhood and pregnancy.
Outside of pig CAFOs, urine and feces collect into what the industry calls “poop lagoons.” Lakes made up entirely of animal waste, which can seep into the water table and pollute drinking water for nearby populations. People of color are disproportionately affected by this pollution, which has led to a growing movement seeking to shed light on the effects of environmental racism.
What we eat is not a personal choice. What we eat profoundly affects every other human on this planet.
When we buy food, we are voting with our dollars.
If we buy animal products, we are voting for the system that is creating antibiotic resistant bacteria.
If we buy animal products, we are voting for the system that could set us back 100 years in terms of life expectancy and medical efficacy.
Is it worth it? Is meat, dairy, and eggs worth this price we have to pay?
I don’t want to live in fear every day of dying from basic infections. I don’t think anyone would choose that.
So we have to start voting for a different future.
We have to vote for a food system that doesn’t have such “catastrophic” effects, as the WHO put it.
A NON-catastrophic food system is a vegan food system.
We have to vote with our dollars for a vegan food system.
Before it’s too late.
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