The Baltimore Sun
Picture of Health, Column by Meredith Cohn and Andrea K. Walker
Poultry farms that use organic methods that don’t involve antibiotics have significantly lower levels of drug-resistant bacteria that can potentially spread to human, according to a new study lead by the University of Maryland’s School of Public Health.
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria have become a problem for health care providers whose choices become limited in treating infection in humans, but there hasn’t been enough data on the sources. So, researchers say the findings, published Wednesday online in Environmental Health Perspectives, are important.
Antibiotic use has been commonplace for decades on large farms in aiding production of meat. But that has drawn the ire of environmentalists and some health advocates.
The study may provide fuel to the argument. It suggests restricting antibiotic use from large-scare poultry farms can reduce resistance for some bacteria quickly.
“We initially hypothesized that we would see some differences in on-farm levels of antibiotic-resistant enterococci when poultry farms transitioned to organic practices,” said Dr. Amy R. Sapkota, an assistant professor with the Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health in the School of Public Health. “But we were surprised to see that the differences were so significant across several different classes of antibiotics even in the very first flock that was produced after the transition to organic standards. It is very encouraging.”
The researchers from Maryland, Pennsylvania State University and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health tested for the common chicken enterococci bacteria in poultry litter feed and water in 10 conventional and 10 newly organic poultry houses in the mid-Atlantic region. Then they tested resistance to 17 common antimicrobials.
All farms tested positive for the bacteria, the organic farms had less of the antibiotic-resistant enterococci. With more organic farms over time, the researcher say they would expect drug-resistance to drop much more dramatically.
