Bans on antibiotics for poultry may not work
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By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY
Antibiotic resistance may be transmitted down family lines — at least in chickens, researchers at the University of Georgia have found.

And that could mean that one solution to the growing problem of drug-resistant antibiotics — banning their use on the farm — may not strike at the heart of the problem.

"We had assumed that reducing usage would reduce resistance, but that doesn't seem to be the case," says Margie Lee of Georgia's College of Veterinary Medicine, the lead researcher for a new study.

Because bacteria swap genes so easily, drug-resistant strains that develop in farm animals can later translate into drug-resistant strains of bacteria in humans.

That's an increasing problem as older antibiotics cease being effective against sometimes-deadly bacteria.

But researchers at Georgia's Poultry Diagnostic and Research Center say antibiotic resistance in strains of E. coli, salmonella and campylobacter may be passed from parents to chicks while the egg is forming or being laid.

If that's the case, merely eliminating antibiotic use on farms won't entirely deal with the growing problem antibiotic-resistant bugs pose not only to animals but people as well.

The researchers tested droppings from more than 140,000 chickens in commercial and lab flocks that did and did not get antibiotics.

They found that even birds raised in the lab with no antibiotics showed levels of antibiotic resistance levels close to those found on farms that use antibiotics.

In one antibiotic-free commercial flock, 73% of the chickens were resistant to the drug oxytetracycline compared with 90% in a commercial flock given antibiotics.

In lab flocks, 97% given antibiotics showed resistance while 47% of the flock not given antibiotics were resistant.

The study is in the March issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology. It was financed by the Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Efforts to end antibiotic use on farms need to continue, says Steven Roach of Ames, Iowa, public health director of the Food Animal Concerns Trust, a member of the Keep Antibiotics Working coalition.

"If you reduce the overall antibiotic use in the flocks, then you reduce the advantage that resistant bacteria have. It won't eliminate all resistance, but it can definitely help reduce it," Roach says.

The findings don't change what consumers need to do to protect against pathogens, Lee says: Cook meat to a safe temperature, wash hands and keep raw meat away from cooked foods.

As to how to go about creating flocks that don't have the antibiotic-resistant bacteria in them, Lee says, scientists are working on it.

"Until we really understand how this parent-to-chick transmission works, we're going to have a hard time handling the resistance thing," she says. "It's in the egg."

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