Growers and Grocers

The Institute of Food Technologists has just published the results of an intense look at organic food, and they argue that there’s little basis for the organic industry’s claims that organic food is safer for human consumption because it lacks antibiotics and resistant bacteria.

I didn’t know that organic producers made that claim. Evidently, neither did Barbara Haumann, spokesperson for the Organic Trade Association, who says “It is not that foods are safer…the overuse of animal antibiotics does lead to superstrains of antibiotic resistant bacteria,”

Numerous items stand out in this piece.

“The fact is that if we cut back on antibiotics in animals raised in food production we would see a marked increase in food costs because we’re going to have a lot of animals we’re not able to treat effectively,” says Michael Doyle, the chairman of the panel that did the study. This doesn’t make sense to me.

The biology of bacterial resistance to antibiotics isn’t that hard: If you don’t completely nuke a bacterial population, the survivors will have an increased resistance to the drug, and then they pass that information onto their descendants (and even their neigbors—bacteria can pass genetic material to other bacteria through plasmids). Raise your hand if you think that every livestock ranch thoroughly eliminates bacterial populations through careful management of antibiotics.

The more antibiotics ranchers use, the less effectively they can treat their livestock in the long run. I wonder if the beef industry uses the same antibiotics it did a decade ago? If not, perhaps Doyle needs to explain how it’s more effective to keep changing antibiotics because the old ones no longer work.

It used to not be a big deal for humans if resistant bacteria evolved inside the digestive tract of a cow. The grass diet created an alkaline environment, and our acidic systems obliterated the microbes accustomed to a higher pH. Corn-fed cows, on the other hand, have an acidic system, so resistant bacteria can survive quite well in our stomachs.

My other favorite quote: “Doyle dismissed possible concerns about the food scientists on the panel being too closely linked to the food industry, noting that about one-third of the panel was made up of microbiologists.” Oh! They’re microbiologists! Well, that’s a relief, because we all know that microbiologists have no biases.

I don’t doubt that human misuse of antibiotics has contributed hugely to bacterial resistance, as Doyle asserts. But you shouldn’t ignore the damage done in small ways, either.