The widespread and unjustified use of antibiotics in livestock farming is generating ever stronger bacteria against which drugs are ineffective.
Intensive livestock farming does not merely torture sentient creatures and exert an enormous environmental impact in terms of emissions and resource consumption — it is also a threat to human health. This is the finding of the episode of Report broadcast on 29 May. The programme, presented by Milena Gabanelli, focused on the link between growing antibiotic resistance and intensive livestock farming.
As the term itself suggests, this refers to resistance to antibiotics, which are increasingly ineffective against bacteria. The excessive use of these drugs has produced extremely resistant bacteria against which no antibiotic has any effect. As many as five thousand deaths in Italy are attributed to this phenomenon every year.
One might think that antibiotics are used mainly by humans to treat illness — but that is wrong: 70 per cent of the antibiotics produced worldwide are in fact used in intensive livestock farming. As a result, humans who then consume meat from animals raised on these farms also ingest antibiotics in turn. Animals are pumped full of drugs so that they survive the appalling living conditions of these farms and can reach the slaughterhouse alive (sometimes, however, simply to fatten the animals and produce more meat to sell).
Inside the animals we commonly eat, resistant bacteria are developing that often remain in animal tissue and subsequently end up on our plates. Consuming this meat can cause chronic disorders and render medicines ineffective when they are genuinely needed, leaving us vulnerable even to the most common illnesses. Report broadcast an investigation by a British journalist who purchased numerous animal products from various supermarkets; tests revealed that extremely dangerous bacteria were present in 10 per cent of the meat packages bought.
According to a British study, these bacteria — resistant even to the latest-generation drugs — could trigger a pandemic on a global scale and cause ten million deaths per year by 2050, more than cancer. "Bacteria colonise humans, and humans move around carrying them everywhere — there is no barrier whatsoever," Stefania Stefani, full professor of microbiology at the University of Catania, told Report.
Resistant bacteria represent a threat to the entire planet; according to the programme broadcast on Rai3, Italy is one of the countries most at risk in Europe. Following an analysis commissioned by the European Union across all member states, it emerged that antibiotic-resistant bacteria are the majority in Italian livestock farms. Northern European countries such as Denmark and the Netherlands, by contrast, have made great strides forward, largely thanks to reduced antibiotic use (more strictly regulated) and the limited influence of pharmaceutical sales representatives.
Just as invisible are the sufferings of animals, whose lives are so far removed from what advertising shows us (Report broadcasts footage filmed by the association Essere Animali inside an Amadori facility, showing chickens being kicked and an employee urinating in the farm), so too does this bacterial threat appear invisible, quietly brushed aside by the European Commission and individual member states.