The Origins of "Farm-aceuticals': How Antibiotics Came to Be Used in Agriculture
As fears concerning antibiotic-resistant super-bugs have mounted in recent years, medical and social researchers have addressed the human practices that have contributed to the situation. They have identified two broad areas of concern: over-prescription of antibiotics in medical practice and the almost universal use of antibiotic feeding in large-scale livestock and poultry production. Our paper addresses the latter, which has proved an especially controversial and complex problem.
During the late 1940s, when scientific interest in the novelty of antibiotics was intense, groups of researchers in the United States and Great Britain discovered what came to be known as the "antibiotic growth effect"-that the feeding of antibiotics at low levels to agricultural animals resulted in enhanced growth. In the United States especially, the post-World War II economic and political circumstances and the extraordinary wartime successes of science and engineering combined to produce a climate extremely friendly to government/industry partnerships.
Enthusiasm in the 1950s
and early 1960s swamped the earliest concerns about the appearance of antibiotic
resistance. The crowded conditions of poultry "factories" and extensive
feedlots provided additional rationale for antibiotic feeding to control
infection In all, the production of antibiotic additives to animal feeds
offered economic rewards to pharmaceutical firms and feed manufacturers,
while the promise of higher production and lower food prices attracted both
farmers and consumers. But in the early 1960s, the
debate both intensified and shifted direction Medical and agricultural researchers
designed experiments to test whether antibiotic feeding in agricultural production
led directly to the appearance of resistant strains in humans. Moreover,
the transformed cultural climate of the 1960s and early 1970s sparked more
intense questioning of industrial practices and assumptions.
By the closing decades
of the twentieth century, Western industrial nations had increasingly regulated
and reduced the use of antibiotic feeding in agriculture. In the United States,
however, regulation has lagged significantly behind European efforts. Our
paper will trace the economic and institutional origins of this still contentious
issue, focusing on the multiple meanings of profits among consumers, agricultural
producers, pharmaceutical companies, feed manufacturers, agricultural scientists,
and government regulators.