Chickens' Lib
Page 22
Hot weather promised a perfect weekend for an open-air event. We set up our stand and it looked impressive. Our posters were second to none and we had an impressive array of leaflets, booklets, postcards, badges and petitions to sign. We even had a fact sheet –produced jointly with Compassion in World Farming– on the newest welfare threat, ostrich farming.
We were pleased to find our stand right next to CIWF’s, and even more so later, when we realized the Minister of Agriculture, John Selwyn Gummer himself, was a few feet away, taking a polite interest in their material. Could this be a chance to mend fences? Surely he would realize our good intentions, if only he’d stop to look at our carefully researched literature!
Of course, we had offended Mr Gummer. Our challenge to him to spend twenty-four hours in an intensive unit was perhaps still fresh in his mind, but even so…
I approached Mr Gummer, suggesting he might like to look at our display. He refused, point blank. We thought this absurd (maverick groups notwithstanding): here we were with our splendid goods, a mere half dozen paces away. I pleaded. He gesticulated. I pleaded again, to no avail. As we argued, Philip Lymbery abandoned his duties on the CIWF stall, having decided to record the occasion on camera.
Ah yes, scrutinising one of the resulting photos with the help of a magnifying glass, I see I was wearing a Chickens’ Lib badge beside my exhibitor’s label. It depicts a battery hen, and the wording is BATTERY CAGES MUST GO. Maybe it stirred up bad memories, the spectre of those twenty-four hours he never did spend alone in a battery shed.
But at least he’s smiling in the photos, most of the time. Passers-by may well have mistaken us for old friends.
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December 3rd, 1992 The Guardian’s ‘Pass Notes No. 39’ feature John Selwyn Gummer. By now he’s resigned from the General Synod over women’s ordination, saying (reportedly): ‘The Synod has finally turned the Church of England into a sect.’
I learn from Pass Notes that he was a student at Cambridge (Selwyn College, appropriately enough) at the time I was teaching the clarinet in the city – quite possibly we’d passed each other in the street.
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Update: By the dawn of the new millennium John Gummer was sounding genuinely concerned about global warming, indeed all things environmental. Could he also have found it in his heart to forgive Chickens’ Lib?
Antibiotics – propping up a sick industry
To ensure the profitability of factory farming, antibiotics are administered to intensively farmed animals on a massive scale. These animals certainly produce cheap food, but many would now argue that factory-farmed produce is very expensive indeed, especially when it costs human lives.
For several years, our concern about the over-use of antibiotics down on the factory farm had been intensifying. We’d not been reassured by a letter from Leeds’ Regional Poultry Husbandry Advisory Officer, dated March 12th 1980, in which he’d stated: ‘Only in the case of broilers are certain growth promoters allowed to be used and an antibiotic does not fall into this group of products allowed to be used.’ This was wrong on two counts – the growth promoters used were antibiotics, and laying hens had these same antibiotics routinely in their feed, as they appeared to ‘enhance performance’, to use an industry term. It seemed that some MAFF officials were operating in the dark as far as antibiotics were concerned, as no doubt farmers were too.
In May 1991, not before time, Chickens’ Lib issued a fact sheet (no. 29) which included a section on the dangers of antibiotic overuse in the veterinary field.
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The discovery of antibiotics marked one of the greatest leaps forward in the history of medicine. No longer does a fever or an infected wound carry with it the danger of untimely death. Now we turn to antibiotics and feel safe. Or we did.
The tragedy is that many previously effective antibiotics have lost their life-saving qualities. Dangerous ‘bugs’ have worked out how to get the better of the drugs designed to kill them. No longer are antibiotics the silver bullet they once promised to be. By the 1980s antibiotic resistance had spread worldwide.
Now, several antibiotics must sometimes be tried before doctors find one that’s effective; meanwhile, patients’ lives may be endangered. For example, in the UK and in Australia the ‘hospital infection’ MRSA has developed resistance to trimethoprim. Trimethoprim, which is widely used to dose pigs, poultry and the human population, has joined the ranks of antimicrobials now useless in the face of a potentially fatal infection (1).
The root cause of the massive on-farm use of antibiotics is obvious: it’s the way the animals are exploited. Poultry and pigs crammed into filthy windowless sheds in their hundreds or thousands, spending their lives on their own faeces, shut away from sunlight and fresh air, continuously under stress; dairy cows worked beyond their endurance – why ever should they be healthy?
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As we all know, it’s only fools who rush in where angels fear to tread, and what’s more, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So I’ll repeat that what follows is no more than a brief nod to a highly complicated subject.
We had no scientists on our staff (come to that no staff in the accepted sense) but we wanted to draw attention to our belief that, without the customary input of on-farm antibiotics, intensive systems would have failed from the very start. Factory farming has gone hand in hand with the discovery of antibiotics and, ever keen to cast its net wider, the intensive industry has failed to face up to the risks and dangers inherent in the misuse of our life-saving drugs.
So we studied the literature as best we could, produced a booklet and a video and, from then on, included relevant items in our fact sheets, to help keep our supporters informed. And we lobbied.
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What follows is a rapid trawl through the years, starting with the Swann Committee. This was set up in the late 1960s to advise the UK government on the possible threat to human health arising from the use of antibiotics down on the farm.
Basically, there are three uses of veterinary antibiotics (antimicrobial and antibiotic mean the same thing): 1) those used as growth-promoters (banned now throughout the EU). 2) those used prophylactically, that is to ward off probable outbreaks of disease, and 3) those used therapeutically, when disease has already struck.
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November 1969: The Swann Report was published, and it made clear the dangers: ‘In systemic infections antibiotic therapy may be life-saving and the treatment may be made more difficult or the patient’s life is threatened or even imperilled because of antibiotic resistance. We accept that this has already happened and we have no doubt that it could do so again…’ (2).
It seems that pressures from drug companies, the veterinary profession and government were too great: Swann was ignored.
In 1985 Veterinary Record stated that veterinary surgeons were ‘under considerable pressure to prescribe antibiotics’. The article also mentioned illicit supplies of drugs, and the fact that antibiotics were being used increasingly to counter ‘unsatisfactory husbandry practices’ (3).
When, in January 2006, the remaining four antibiotic growth promoters still in legal use were banned throughout the EU, some of these same drugs continued to be used therapeutically on farmed animals. One such example is Salinomycin Sodium, which is recommended for broilers suffering from coccidiosis, an intestinal disease common among young chickens and characterised by diarrhoea.
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We numbered two or three vets amongst our supporters, and one day an enlightening document arrived anonymously through the post. The Medicines Committee of the British Veterinary Association (BVA) had produced a Briefing Document dated May 1989, instructing how veterinarians should, at local level, counter ‘uninformed, emotive and often incorrect statements about the use of antibiotics in animals.’ The author of the introduction to the document was the president of the BVA.
Its format was a series of suggested answers to frequently asked questions, all seemingly aimed at justifying the continued use o
f antibiotics, both to treat existing disease and as growth promoters. We learn that the US government ‘…has in recent years rejected an “Imminent Hazard” Petition. It was argued [in the Petition] that the sub-therapeutic use of penicillin and tetracyclines as growth promoters was leading to a significant risk of transfer of multiple resistance from animal to human bacteria. It was claimed that typhoid fever in man might become difficult/impossible to treat. Rejection of the Petition was based on extensive studies which produced a totally opposite finding to the Swann Report. For the first time, a legislative body accepted that low sub-therapeutic concentrations of antibiotics in feed do not present hazard to man because they do not exert selection pressure’. Note that there are no references for these ‘extensive studies’.
Then we read (though we in Chickens’ Lib weren’t meant to): ‘At the Association of Veterinarians in Industry Symposium “Ten Years on from Swann” in 1981, medically qualified speakers [wow! not just anybody!] gave papers which cast doubt on the validity of some aspects of the Swann Report. Statements such as this were made – “…the concept that veterinary use of antibiotics is building up a reservoir of resistant Salmonella capable of producing dangerous sepsis in man is erroneous.” ’ Given the title of this symposium – Veterinarians in Industry – its ‘findings’ were perhaps not surprising, in view of the entrenched nature of a highly lucrative trade in pharmaceuticals.
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As recently as 1998 a spokeswoman for the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) sounded as confident about the safety of antibiotics as the BVA had been: ‘Antibiotics in this country have brought enormous benefits for animal health and welfare over many decades and we have not seen any scientific evidence of the transfer of resistance to humans’ (4).
However, in July of that very same year, MAFF published ‘A Review of Antimicrobial Resistance in the Food Chain – A Technical Report’ which implied the exact opposite: ‘Antimicrobials used for therapy in food animals are also used for human therapy. Only a few food animal therapeutics do not belong to a class used in human medicine.’
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Contrast the complacent lines of argument from the BVA and the NFU with comments from Professor Brian Spratt, made when addressing a meeting of international specialists in London the previous year, 1997: ‘MRSA is an aggressive infection and can be life-threatening in hospitals. There is a real worry that if vancomycin (resistance) moves into MRSA there will be no way to treat those who are infected. If this happens, the consequence is likely to be that people will die from post-operative infections. If this organism becomes common in hospitals, many surgical advances will be halted. This is a major worry.’ (5)
Speakers at the conference warned that vancomycin-resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus were already emerging in Japan. When Professor Spratt gave his warning, avoparcin (the veterinary equivalent to vancomycin) was freely available as a ‘performance enhancer’ (aka growth promoter) for broilers, turkeys, pigs, cattle, calves and lambs.
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In June 1990, a letter to The Lancet from physicians working in two UK hospitals warned: ‘There has lately been interest in the use of quinolones to treat patients with salmonella infections. One outstanding issue is the emergence of resistance.’ (6)
A month later, the same authors joined forces with MAFF’s Central Veterinary Laboratory at Weybridge, once again conveying their doubts via the letters page of The Lancet, but now linking human and veterinary medicine: ‘Thought needs to be given as to whether quinolones, such as enrofloxacin, should be given to animals.’ (7)
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In our fact sheet 29 we’d reported on trials being conducted by the international drug company Bayer: ‘…an animal test certificate (ATC) has recently been issued permitting enrofloxacin (Baytril 10 per cent oral solution; Bayer) to be used under controlled conditions in turkeys, chickens, pigeons and psittacine birds’ (8). Bayer, with its ATC for enrofloxacin, was permitted to conduct trials of the drug on a commercial basis. Any veterinarian suspecting a ‘suitable’ disease in his or her client’s poultry flock could now put enrofloxacin to the test.
The active ingredient in Bayer’s ‘Baytril’ is fluoroquinolone, identical to Ciprofloxacin and valuable in human medicine. For farmed animals it is typically prescribed to counteract primary and secondary bacterial infections.
Diseases associated with these pathogens include respiratory infections, arthritis and infectious sinovitis, all prone to run like wildfire through intensively stocked poultry sheds.
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June 1991 had found the Government still complacent about antibiotic resistance. In our May newsletter we’d asked our supporters to write to their MPs expressing concerns about the wide use of antibiotics in the poultry industry. David Maclean, Parliamentary Secretary to MAFF, replied as follows to our supporter’s MP so that the MP in turn could, probably unwittingly, pass on a load of misinformation to his constituent: ‘Before any veterinary medicine can be placed on the market, it must first be licensed under the terms of the Medicines Act 1968. Licences are issued only after the Veterinary Products Committee (VPC) – an independent committee of eminent scientists – has satisfied itself that stringent standards on safety, quality and efficacy have been met. Scientists at the Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD) are responsible to Ministers, acting in their role as the licensing authority, for the initial assessment of application for product licences from pharmaceutical companies…On antibiotics the VPC has made a careful evaluation over the years of the question of their suitability for veterinary treatment and which ones can be used safely without posing any kind of threat to human health, whether by causing resistance to those antibiotics used in human medicine, or otherwise…Any approach from a company for an ATC would be turned down if it were considered that such a trial would pose a threat to human health.’
Clearly, the Government, along with its associated ‘safety’ committees and the BVA, was, at least in public, willing to turn a blind eye on the mass of literature already pointing to the spread of dangerous resistance. However, storm clouds of doubt must already have been gathering over the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, for only seven years
later MAFF’s review highlighting antimicrobial resistance was issued. Within its pages appeared an astonishing list of antibiotics/antimicrobials routinely given to pigs, and written in the sure knowledge that humans were at the receiving end too: ‘ Antimicrobial treatment is more common in indoor pigs…Treatment must be given to the sow for puerperal disorders such as metritis, mastitis and for specific diseases such as erysipelas or leptospirosis. Piglets will receive treatment for enteritis and for respiratory disease. At weaning (usually 3 weeks) all piglets are gathered, mixed, and then reared to finishing weights. The first stage (weaners) are kept warm and usually develop post weaning diarrhoea. This is caused by E. coli and occurs on day 3 post weaning.’ Here follows a sad list (sad if one considers the degree of piglet suffering involved), detailing several other diseases, all presented as practically inevitable – for example ‘At 8 weeks the pigs may be called growers and move to another house. Here they will develop Enzootic Pneumonia, streptococcal meningitis, and, possibly, swine dysentery. Respiratory disease may cause problems almost until slaughter…Antimicrobial [antibiotic] use varies dramatically from herd to herd. In a survey of pig farms in 1995 (Taylor unpublished data), farms were found which used only penicillin and streptomycin and perhaps topical tetracycline for wounds. These were high health herds and were free of most of the diseases requiring treatment. Other herds were infected with some or most of the diseases mentioned above and had been prescribed up to 10 antimicrobials. In a typical herd, there is use of neomycin, apramycin, amoxyclav, ampicillin, enrofloxacin or trimethoprim sulphonamide in the diarrhoeic piglets for E.coli enteritis.’ (9)
What price that bacon sandwich?
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At around the time of David Maclean’s letter about ‘stringent standards’ regarding antibiotic use (June 1991) Chickens�
� Lib took part in a television discussion on factory farming. Those of us likely to be invited to contribute in some way were arranged together, on the over-stocked benches you get in TV studios.
I found myself thigh-to-thigh with David Maclean and I swear I could literally feel his antagonism.
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A decade later: In 2001 FAWN was in touch with the USA’s Food and Drug Administration. A letter we received from the FDA explained that it: ‘…proposed to withdraw approval of the new animal drug application (NADA) for use of the fluoroquinolone antimicrobial enrofloxacin in poultry [because the drug] causes the development of fluoroquinolone-resistant campylobacter, a pathogen to humans.’ (10)
By contrast, UK physicians could spell out their serious concerns in the pages of The Lancet yet nothing was done to protect human health.
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The most recent statistics for antibiotic use are from 2007 and go like this:
• 54% sold for use in humans
• 40% sold for food producing animals
• 4% sold for companion animals
• 2% sold for combination of food and non-food producing animals
(11)
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There’s no question now that the UK’s department of agriculture recognises the dangers of on-farm antibiotic use – and why shouldn’t it? The issue has been understood for decades. In 1998 MAFF stated: “The use of medicines is fundamental to the development of antimicrobial resistance. This was shown by Smith and Crabb (1956), and all medicines in use, whether in man or in animals can be expected to select for resistance.” (12) And no, 1956 is not a misprint.
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So why are systems that promote ill-health in farmed animals, thereby necessitating the over-use of drugs, still permitted? The answer must be that governments past and present have weighed up the various pros and cons of the matter and the drugs have won. For it is the pharmaceutical industry that ensures that millions of ‘food animals’ stay alive until ready for slaughter, so keeping the wheels of British factory farming turning.