• World Animal Protection says there is need to introduce and enforce regulations ending the routine use of antibiotics to promote fast growth of animals and also to prevent disease across groups.
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Factory farming is likely to cause a health crisis of antimicrobial resistance and the rise of superbugs, the World Animal Protection has warned.
Superbugs are strains of bacteria, viruses, parasites and fungi that are resistant to most of the antibiotics and other medications commonly used to treat the infections they cause
Victor Yamo, World Animal Protection farming campaigns manager, said antibiotics are the silent props of factory farming systems, preventing stressed, confined animals from getting sick in the dismal conditions they live in.
Yamo said farm animals in high welfare systems have reduced stress, improved immunity hence resilient to disease and require fewer antibiotics.
“Superbugs make antibiotics less effective in treating sick people thereby having the potential of triggering a global health crisis. Around 700,000 people die annually from superbugs and there could be a significant additional toll from superbugs during the current pandemic and into the future,” he said.
Yamo spoke on Monday during the launch of a report on factory farming and the rise of superbugs.
The World Health Organization warns that we could reach a stage where we have organisms resistant to all antibiotics because of the superbug crisis – a post-antibiotic era.
This means commonplace ailments could suddenly become dangerous, perhaps impossible to treat because of bacterial resistance to the available antibiotics.
The report revealed that, 75 per cent of all antibiotics produced globally are currently used in farming.
Yamo said there is ample science showing how antibiotic overuse on factory farms is leading to antibiotic resistant organisms, which are spreading to the farm workers, the environment and into the food chain, ultimately getting to the consumers and the public.
According to a 2020 UN report on animal welfare, intensive farming is responsible for more than half of all infectious diseases such as Swine Flu, Bird Flu and Nipah virus, that have moved between animals and people since 1940.
The report stated that the current Covid-19 pandemic should be a wake-up call for factory farming and its regulators around the world.
The report called for the ending of factory farming and moving to a more sustainable food system in order to address the current superbug threat and reduce the risk of the next pandemic crisis coming from farm animals.
Experts called for concerted action from the global retail, finance and animal production sectors, governments and intergovernmental organisations to come together to phase out factory farming.
“Stopping this cruel and inefficient system dependent on antibiotic overuse is vital to improve animal welfare and protect animal health, people’s health and ultimately the global economies from the impact of future pandemics,” Yamo said.