By RICARDO ABRAMOVAY*

The agri-food system must urgently be governed much more by the logic of sufficiency than by the crazy obsession with increasing production at any cost.

The insatiable contemporary appetite for meat is destroying the power of scientific innovation that, since the second half of the 2016th century, has saved millions of lives and contributed to the spectacular global increase in longevity. It was in September XNUMX that the United Nations General Assembly recognized the inappropriate use of antibiotics – and antimicrobial drugs in general – in animal husbandry as one of the causes of their increasing inefficiency.

Antimicrobial resistance is one of the ten biggest global threats to human health. According to estimates, resistant bacterial infections are linked to the deaths of around 5 million people per year. If this rate continues, healthcare costs are expected to rise to US$1 trillion by 2050, according to the World Bank. All over the world, hospitals are announcing the discovery of superbugs, and it is shocking to see the global map of scientific studies about the phenomenon.

The basic mechanism by which bacteria undergo mutations that render antibiotics incapable of combating them was described, in a simple way, by Alexander Fleming when he received the 1945 Nobel Prize in Medicine, together with Ernst Boris Chain and Howard Walter Florey, for the discovery of penicillin.

“Mr. X. has a sore throat. He buys and takes penicillin—not enough to kill the streptococci, but enough to teach them to resist penicillin. He then infects his wife. Mrs. X. develops pneumonia and is treated with penicillin. Since the streptococci are now resistant to penicillin, the treatment fails and Mrs. X. dies.” The moral of the story, concludes Alexander Fleming: “If you take penicillin, take enough of it.”

Shortly after this warning, however, biologist Thomas Hughes Juke made a discovery while working in a laboratory in the United States that revolutionized poultry production and, in some ways, contradicted Fleming's recommendations. Thomas Hughes showed that introducing small doses of antibiotics into the diets of chicks and chickens increased the animals' growth rate, even in the absence of signs of disease.

The antibiotic era, which began in the mid-1940s, is marked by the contradiction between Alexander Fleming's warning and the patterns of industrial animal farming, in which antibiotic consumption is increasing and widespread. Antibiotics began to be used both to stimulate animal growth and as a preventative measure: scientific research promoted transformations that, from the mid-XNUMXth century to the present, multiplied the average weight of industrially farmed birds by five.

But the premise for the massive adoption of this genetic transformation is the homogeneity of the animals, which allows for the standardization of feeding, slaughter times and the creation of a truly industrial scale. This genetic monotony creates an environment conducive to the multiplication of viruses and bacteria, which, in turn, require the increasing use of antibiotics.

This leads to the vicious circle described by Alexander Fleming: bacteria without natural resistance to antimicrobials are eliminated, but those that are resistant multiply in an environment where they do not encounter competition, which requires the increasing use of medicines.

Industrial power and animal welfare

This production standardization is based on the control of animal genetics by a handful of companies. Poultry meat is expected to reach revenues of US$422 billion by 2025 and contribute 41% of the supply of animal protein by 2030. According to the ETC research group, just two companies control more than 90% of the world's broiler genetics.

It is the sector with the highest industrial concentration in the agri-food chain, and the industrial scale of this genetic monotony is achieved through the standardization of production methods, in which the use of antimicrobials is part of the technological package that predominates throughout the world.

The impressive efficiency in converting vegetable proteins into animal products is the fundamental hallmark of this package. However, as Peter Singer already denounced in the classic Animal liberation (published in 1975 and updated and reissued in 2023), the enormous suffering of farmed animals is the counterpart of this.

The changes cause painful muscle diseases, resulting from the rapid weight gain of the birds, which in many cases spend their lives without seeing sunlight. In pig farming, females are caged during the breeding period and cannot even turn around.

The technologies that have enabled the spectacular increase in meat supply in recent decades are characterized by widespread disrespect for the dignity of beings endowed with intelligence, the ability to communicate and play, who cannot carry out their most elementary natural propensities, which contrasts with the current notion of animal welfare, which goes far beyond the adequate administration of food, water and medicine to farm animals.

China, Brazil and USA

Industrial meat production is an incubator for zoonotic diseases, since, as a consequence of genetic monotony, all animals have the same immune system. To prevent viruses and bacteria from spreading in this environment that is so prone to infections, the use of antimicrobials and, especially, antibiotics is essential. More than 70% of antibiotics produced globally are intended for animals, according to a study published in magazine Science. China is the largest consumer of veterinary antimicrobials, with 45% of the total, followed by Brazil (8%) and the United States (7%).

It is true that in some countries, regulations have been implemented that have allowed a drastic drop in the use of these drugs. In Norway, for example, 8 milligrams of antimicrobials are used per kilo produced, while in China it is 318 milligrams per kilo.

Brazilian data on this topic are not transparent. One field research carried out in a swine production center in Minas Gerais indicated the average use of no less than 434 milligrams per kilo of meat. Although this use has been prohibited in Brazil since 2020, the study shows the ease with which antibiotics for animal use can be acquired in the interior of the country – and, worse, indicates the increase in the use of drugs in relation to that found in previous research, from 2017.

Of course, antibiotics represent a significant part of production costs. Why, then, is their use increasing so much? Studies show that the use of antibiotics costs less than the hygiene measures adopted in countries that have reduced the consumption of these drugs – several European countries limit the use of antibiotics to 50 milligrams per kilo of meat.

Antibiotics are also widely used in fish farming and agriculture. The same bacterial reaction in animals also occurs in soil, as demonstrated by a recent article. Transgenic plants resistant to insect attacks have been cultivated in such a proportion that they now require increased use of antibiotics.

Anyone who thinks that technological innovation always makes it possible to tackle problems of this magnitude should read the warning from the WHO (World Health Organization) and the global ReAct network: in the last 40 years, the launch of products capable of circumventing bacterial resistance has practically stagnated. Research into new drugs is expensive, and human use of antibiotics is sporadic — unlike, for example, drugs for high blood pressure, which are used continuously, which means greater profitability. Furthermore, low- and middle-income countries are proportionally more affected by antimicrobial resistance.

Two proposals

The statement by the High-Level Panel on Antimicrobial Resistance, which met during the last United Nations General Assembly in September 2024, could not have been more disappointing. Contrary to what happened in 2016 and the determination to reduce the use of antibiotics in animals by 30% by 2030, agreed at a UN meeting in Oman in 2022, the latest statement limited itself to advocating a reduction in the use of antimicrobials in food production without establishing clear targets.

The text, furthermore, does not make any commitment to increase investment in medicines capable of combating superbugs nor does it mention industrial animal farming as a fundamental vector of antimicrobial resistance.

The scientific literature on this topic converges on two proposals to tackle antimicrobial resistance: defining a limit on the use of these drugs and establishing a reasonable timeframe to achieve it.

According to a a study published in the journal Science, there would be a 60% reduction in global antibiotic consumption if OECD countries and China limited their use to 50 milligrams per kilogram of meat. In most cases, hygiene measures and a reduction in the density of confined animals are sufficient as an alternative.

However, wouldn't this increase costs and reduce the supply of animal protein? This question needs to be answered based on the guidance of the world's most important food guides, starting with the Brazilian one, which is celebrating its tenth anniversary and has exerted decisive international influence: we need to reduce meat consumption.

Today, the vast majority of countries, and even the low-income groups in each of them, record a meat intake that is higher than that necessary to satisfy metabolic needs. Contrary to the myth carefully cultivated by the industry, contemporary diets lack fruits, vegetables, and fresh vegetables and, increasingly, have an excess of both ultra-processed foods and meat.

This means that the necessary reduction in the supply of meat is compatible with the prospect of a diversified and quality diet to satisfy human needs, not with the industrial horizon of a world that increasingly desires animal products.

The emergence of superbugs therefore requires a profound reflection on the very nature of contemporary technological innovation. It is impossible to doubt the efficiency of the increase in meat supply by the agri-food system since the end of the Second World War.

The impacts of technological innovation and market power that underpin this efficiency, however, increasingly compromise human health and animal welfare. All this in a context in which global meat consumption far exceeds, in almost all regions of the world, the metabolic requirements for a healthy life.

The link between industrial animal farming and antimicrobial resistance shows that the agrifood system must urgently be governed much more by the logic of sufficiency than by the crazy obsession with increasing production at any cost.

*Ricardo Abramovay is a professor at the Josué de Castro Chair at the Faculty of Public Health at USP. Author, among other books, of Infrastructure for Sustainable Development (Elephant). [https://amzn.to/3QcqWM3]

Originally published in the newspaper Folha de S. Paul.

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