How much impact do resistant bacteria from animals have on human health?
Organizations ranging from the American Medical Association to the National Academy of Sciences have concluded that agricultural use of antibiotics must be reduced in order to help combat the emerging public health crisis of antibiotic resistance. Similarly, an interdisciplinary panel of experts concluded after a two-year review of more than 500 scientific studies that “use of antimicrobials in food animals contributes to the growing problem of antimicrobial resistance in animal and human infections.” Public health experts and scientists, rather than animal-drug producers and agribusiness, should be the ones to make the determination regarding impact on human health. And they have spoken. Is there is evidence that banning agricultural antibiotics reduces resistance in people? Studies have shown a decline in certain vancomycin-resistant bacteria (specifically enterococci) isolated from humans after a ban on the agricultural use of avoparcin (which triggers cross-resistance to vancomycin
