An Urban's Rural View

Chipotle and Whole Foods did it long ago. Chick-Fil-A did it last year. McDonald's just did it. Costco is talking about it.

One by one, businesses that serve chicken are promising their birds will be raised without antibiotics. It's a chain reaction: Each anti-antibiotic pledge begets new pledges.

KFC, are you next?

Competition, not regulation, is the reaction's catalyst. No government agency bans antibiotics in livestock raising. Food and Drug Administration voluntary guidelines (http://tiny.cc/…) allow their use for treating sick animals and preventing disease with a veterinarian's blessing.

Restaurants and retailers are demanding tougher limits. Surveys and focus groups tell them "raised without any antibiotics ever" appeals to consumers. They see opinion swinging against antibiotics. They see competitors moving. No one wants to be left on the platform as the train leaves the station.

Note that in a competitive marketplace, the basis for the public's opinion is of secondary importance. If people want something, businesses will give it to them. Whether they're right to want it doesn't matter.

People have been known to base food choices on sketchy information. A Cornell University study showed many believe organic food is less fattening (http://tiny.cc/…).

Similarly, they've been known to worry about the wrong things. You could argue that's sometimes the case with animal antibiotics. Some people, for example, confuse antibiotics with hormones. Others fear antibiotic residues linger in their meat.

Both concerns miss the point. The main concern with animal antibiotics isn't daughters reaching puberty prematurely, nor is it the risk of taking an un-prescribed dose of penicillin. It's the resistance to antibiotics their overuse breeds. It's the mutant superbugs antibiotics can no longer cure.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and prevention, antibiotic-resistant bacteria kill 23,000 Americans a year and sicken 2 million (http://tiny.cc/…). The World Health Organization warns we're heading toward a "post-antibiotic world," a world no longer able to transplant organs, do kidney dialysis, treat victims of traumatic accidents, allay minor infections—the list goes on and on (http://tiny.cc/…).

That's something to worry about.

You may believe -- you'd be justified in believing -- that misuse of antibiotics in humans deserves a big share of the blame. CDC's report says 50% of doctors' prescriptions are unnecessary.

Even so, you might want to avoid meat from animals given antibiotics. You might well reason that no source of superbugs can be ignored -- that in the war against antibiotic resistance, there can be no draft dodgers (http://tiny.cc/…).

In deciding this, you might understand you were not so much avoiding personal risk, which is low if meat is cooked properly, as exercising social responsibility. It might, for you, be the equivalent of recycling, something you do because it's good for everybody even if it profits you little personally.

How many people think this way? That's hard to know. The best data available are from a 2012 Consumer Reports poll (http://tiny.cc/…), which had 86% saying they'd like poultry raised without antibiotics available and 72% fearing superbugs.

Despite those large numbers, it's unclear why those polled think what they think. The reasons they cited for their fears appear to have been in response to leading questions -- questions that suggested possible answers. What they would have volunteered if asked an open-ended question -- "What do you fear?" -- is a matter of speculation.

Chances are the nuances of the issue elude the public. The "halo effect" triumphs: No one knows why, but what everyone knows is that everyone knows antibiotic-free is better.

In this case, the halo effect isn't leading the world down the wrong path. Cutting back on animal antibiotics makes sense, whether or not the public understands the issue.

The problem is that in the competitive stampede to get ahead of public opinion, restaurants and retailers may overrun the capacity of their suppliers to respond.

Today only 5% of the meat in the U.S. is from animals reared without antibiotics (http://tiny.cc/…). McDonald's is giving its chicken supply chain only two years to get rid of antibiotics used in humans. It took Perdue 10 years to eliminate most antibiotics from its birds (http://tiny.cc/…).

That's the thing about stampedes and chain reactions. Once started, they're impossible to control. Where this story ends -- Trader Joe's? Walmart? pork? beef? -- no one can say.

Urban Lehner can be reached at urbanity@hotmail.com
Follow Urban Lehner on Twitter @Urbanize

(CZ)

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