Should children avoid meat treated with antibiotics?

Our guest blogger today is Lori Handy, MD from the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children.

Today begins "Get Smart" about antibiotics week sponsored by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. It serves to raise awareness of the threat of antibiotic resistance, as an estimated 23,000 deaths occur each year in this country due to antibiotic resistant infections.

It is important to focus not only on the appropriate use of antibiotics in people, but to recognize the implications of inappropriate antibiotic use in animal agriculture, as well. Antibiotic use in livestock translates to antibiotic resistance in bacteria, and increases the risk for antibiotic resistant infections in children.

The American Academy of Pediatrics also said in a technical report published online today that the unnecessary use of antibiotics in food-producing animals is endangering medicine's ability to treat life-threatening infections in young patients.

"Children can be exposed to multiple-drug resistant bacteria, which are extremely difficult to treat if they cause an infection, through contact with animals given antibiotics and through consuming the meat of those animals," said the report's lead author Jerome A. Paulson, MD, FAAP in a statement.

Surprisingly, about 80 percent of overall use of antibiotics in the United States is in livestock, with many of these antibiotics considered important for use in humans. While certain antibiotics are given to animals for illness, many are prescribed for nontherapeutic use such as feed efficiency and growth promotion. In 2013, the FDA proposed a plan to phase out use of medically important antibiotics from food animals, but did not explicitly ban antibiotic use when not medically necessary.

While further legislation is considered for national policies, families have options. There is a growing trend among restaurants, grocery stores, and other food purveyors to offer meats that are antibiotic free. When consumers choose to purchase these products, they are making a healthy decision for their family, and they are also making a statement in favor of judicious use of antibiotics in agriculture. The more the public demands antibiotic free meats, the greater the pressure on suppliers to sell it and the greater the pressure on policymakers to mandate the elimination of unnecessary antibiotic use in livestock. Consumer preference for healthier options has driven change in the food industry before, with the elimination of trans fat and artificial ingredients from thousands of products and menus.

Continued overuse of antibiotics will surely result in more antibiotic resistant organisms, and difficult to treat infections in our patients. As quickly as scientists develop new antibiotics, they are utilized by both humans and animals, and bacteria develop resistance. As consumers exercise their purchasing power in favor of an antibiotic free food supply, they can force a tipping point in our national policy on the use of antibiotics in animal agriculture.

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