Does antibiotic use on plants pose a risk to human health?
This question is the subject of contentious debate in the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere. One consumer advocacy group in the U.S. has gone so far as to call for a ban on antibiotics used as pesticides (Lieberman and Wootan 1998; Center for Science in the Public Interest http://www.cspinet.org/reports/abiotic.htm). Growers, however, defend their practice as being so limited in scope as to be inconsequential to the emergence of antibiotic resistance in hospitals and communities. With almost no research data to uphold either view, arguments are frequently based on circumstantial evidence and fueled by passion. The greatest concern of those opposed to antibiotic use on plants is that spraying antibiotics in the open environment and over physically large expanses of land might increase the frequency of antibiotic resistance genesnot just streptomycin- and tetracycline-resistance genes but any other resistance genes that might be carried on the same plasmidthereby increasing the risk of these g
