SUPERBUGS IN CONVENTIONAL VS ORGANIC CHICKEN
One of the most concerning developments in medicine
is the emergence of bacterial super-resistance.
Resistance to not just one class of drugs, like penicillin,
but resistance to multiple classes of drugs,
so-called multi-drug resistant bacteria.
In the 2013 FDA retail meat report more than a quarter
of the salmonella found contaminating retail chicken breast
were resistant to not one but five or more
different classes of antibiotic treatment drugs.
Throughout history, there has been a continual battle
between humans and pathogens.
For the last half century that battle has taken
the form of bugs versus drugs.
First, we developed penicillin, and the US Surgeon General declared,
"The war against infectious diseases has been won."
However, the euphoria over the potential conquest
of infectious diseases was short lived.
In response, bacteria developed an enzyme
that ate penicillin for breakfast.
Literally, an enzyme that breaks down penicillin, called penicillinase.
In fact they can excrete large quantities of the enzyme
and so can destroy the drug before it even comes into contact.
OK, so we developed a drug that blocks the penicillin-eating enzyme.
That's why sometimes you see two drug names:
one is the antibiotic, and the other is a drug that blocks
the enzyme the bacteria uses to block the antibiotic.
But the bacteria outsmarted us again, and so it goes back and forth.
However hard we try and however clever we are,
there is no question that organisms,
that have been around for 3 billion years,
and have adapted to survive under the most extreme conditions,
will always overcome whatever we decide to throw at them.
So we went from first-generation antibiotics,
to second-generation antibiotics,
to third-generation antibiotics.
But now we have bacteria that evolved the capacity to survive
our big gun third-generation cephalosporins like Ceftriaxone,
which is what we rely on to treat
life-threatening salmonella infections in children.
Where are these super-duper superbugs found?
Almost 90% were isolated from chicken carcasses or retail chicken meat.
But what if we only eat no-antibiotic-added, you know, organic chicken?
A comparison of these multi-drug resistant bacteria
in organic and conventional retail chicken meat.
The first such study ever published.
All of the conventional chicken samples were contaminated,
however, the majority, 84%, of organic chicken
meat samples were also contaminated.
So 100% versus 84%.
Organic is definitely better, but odds are
we'd still buying something that could make our family sick.
But where do these antibiotic resistance bacteria come from
if they're not using antibiotics on organic farms?
A possible explanation is that the day old chicks
coming from the hatcheries are already infected before they arrive,
or they can become contaminated after they leave in the slaughter plant.
Organic chickens and conventionally raised chickens
are typically all slaughtered in the same slaughter houses,
so there may be cross-contamination between carcasses.
And finally, factory farms are dumping antibiotics and antibiotic resistant
bacteria-laden chicken manure out into the environment.
You can pick up antibiotic resistance genes
right out the soil around factory farms.
So even meat raised without antibiotics
may be contaminated with multi-drug resistant bacteria.
In a cover story in which Consumer Reports
urged retailers to stop selling meat produced with antibiotics,
they noted some store employee confusion,
though maybe they were not so confused after all.
An assistant store manager at one grocery store,
when asked by a shopper for meats
raised without antibiotics, responded,
"Wait, you mean like veggie burgers?"