Nutrition Science and Everyday Application - beta v 0.1

358 ALICE CALLAHAN, PHD, HEATHER LEONARD, MED, RDN, AND TAMBERLY POWELL, MS, RDN
released by the FDA in December 2018 show that antibiotic sales for farm animals have
dropped significantly after this rules change. 6
Antibiotics can still be used to treat sick farm animals or stop the spread of disease, which
is important for animal health and welfare. However, antibiotics can also be used to prevent
disease in animals that might become sick. Many experts argue that allowing antibiotics to
be used for disease prevention leaves a loophole for large amounts of antibiotics to continue
to be used, especially in farming systems where animals are crowded and diseases can
spread quickly. The World Health Organization has called for this practice to stop, reserving
antibiotics only for use in animals that are already sick, not healthy animals. The goal is to
reduce antibiotic use in order to reduce the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria,
so that we can still use these valuable medicines to treat sick animals and humans when
needed.
When antibiotics are used in food animals, bacteria can evolve resistance to those
antibiotics. Those antibiotics-resistant bacteria can then be present in your meat, and they
can spread in the environment from animal feces, including into the water used to irrigate
fruits and vegetables. Humans exposed to these bacteria by handling or eating
contaminated food can then become sick with infections that are resistant to antibiotic
treatment, as shown in this infographic from the CDC: