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Hobby Farm News -
Report refutes growth antibiotics' economic benefits
Johns Hopkins study uses data from poultry company Perdue
 Does the use of growth-promoting antibiotics in animals such as chickens make economic sense? According to a new study published by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health, such use is a “financial loser for poultry producers.”
Medical and public health experts, including the World Health Organization and the American Medical Association, already agree on the lack of health benefits from the use of growth-promoting antibiotics (GPAs); they say the use of GPAs is a major cause of antibiotic-resistant infections in humans.
This is the main reason Europe has banned the use of such antibiotics. Effective January 1, 2006, Europe banned the feeding of all antibiotics and related drugs to livestock for growth promotion purposes.
Still, agricultural and pharmaceutical interests claim that they need GPAs for efficient farm production.
Now, the new Johns Hopkins study refutes this claim using the poultry industry’s own data. The study finds that “antibiotics slightly accelerated chicken growth, but that the benefit was offset by the cost of purchasing antibiotics.” The data used in John Hopkins’ research came from top poultry producer Perdue, which reports annual sales in excess of $3.4 billion.
The U.S. Government offers no way to verify claims by Perdue and other large poultry producers that say they no longer use antibiotics to promote growth. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) takes no action to control the use of antibiotics and does nothing to monitor or collect drug use data. It’s estimated that 70% of all antibiotics used in the U.S. are used as feed additives for chicken, hogs, and beef cattle.
To read more about the John Hopkins report “Growth Promoting Antibiotics in Food Animal Production: An Economic Analysis,” read the January-February issue of Public Health Reports.
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