4030.0: Tuesday, October 23, 2001: 8:30 AM-10:00 AM

Oral Session

Antibiotic Use in Agriculture: Enormous Volumes, Public Health Risks

Antibiotic resistance now constitutes a global public health crisis. Scientists know that antibiotic use inevitably leads to antibiotic resistance. But antibiotic use has remained, in generally, almost completely unmonitored in the U.S.Recent estimates are that annual use of antibiotics in agriculture is nearly 10X greater by volume than all therapeutic antibiotic use in humans. Around 84% of agricultural antibiotic use apparently occurs not as therapy for sick animals, but as low level additives in the feed and water of cattle, pigs and poultry, to help convert feed into meat more quickly and efficiently or to avert infection under animal confinement conditions that often are crowded and stress-inducing. This panel will focus on research showing where antibiotics are used in agriculture, as well as scientific evidence suggesting that this use has increased resistance in foodborne pathogens, and increased problems of infections with resistant bacteria in humans, and the mechanisms by which this resistance is transferred or created.
See individual abstracts for presenting author's disclosure statement.
Learning Objectives: N/A
Moderator(s):David B. Wallinga, MD, MPA
8:30 AMAgricultural Use of Antibiotics: Recent Evidence of Links to Resistant Pathogens and Foodborne Disease
Fred Angulo, DVM, PhD
8:45 AMLooking Beyond Hospitals and Farms: Antibiotic Resistance as an Ecological Problem
J. Glenn Morris, MD, MPH&TM
9:00 AMAntibiotic Use in Agriculture: Public Health Risks & Policy
David B. Wallinga, MD, MPA
Sponsor:Epidemiology
Cosponsors:Chiropractic Health Care; Environment; Socialist Caucus
CE Credits:CME, Chiropractic, Health Education (CHES), Nursing, Pharmacy, Social Work

The 129th Annual Meeting of APHA