Humanity can avoid the further emergence of new "super-bacteria" that are not affected by drugs if the use of antibiotics on farms is reduced by 60-80%, scientists say in an article published in the journal Science.
“We have identified three possible strategies that would allow us to avoid this - limiting the circulation of antibiotics, introducing a tax on 'agricultural' antibiotics and reducing meat consumption. Together, they could all help us reach the 80% mark and significantly reduce the chances of super-microbes emerging,”said Thomas van Boeckel of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.
In recent years, the problem of the emergence of so-called "super-bacteria" - microbes that are resistant to the action of one or more antibiotics, has become more and more acute for doctors. Among them there are both rare infectious agents and very common and dangerous pathogens, such as Staphylococcus aureus (Staphilococcus aureus) or pneumococcus (Klebsiella pneumoniae). There is a real danger that all antibiotics will lose their effectiveness and medicine will return to the "dark ages".
The main "incubators" of such microbes, according to scientists today, are hospitals and livestock farms, where antibiotics are used to accelerate the growth of beef cattle. Both on farms and in hospitals, there are large numbers of potential carriers of the infection, both bacteria themselves and antibiotics, forcing them to evolve and preventing "ordinary" bacteria from driving out less prolific super-microbes.
Van Bockel and his colleagues analyzed the current trends in the development of such bacterial strains and came to the conclusion that all countries of the world, especially the United States and China, must take drastic measures to reduce the volume of antibiotics used in agriculture in order to avoid the emergence of dangerous "Invulnerable" bacteria.
Today, according to scientists, livestock farms all over the world consume over 130 thousand tons of antibiotics, the lion's share of which is used on farms in the United States and China, and by 2030 this figure will grow to 200 thousand tons. This indicator, as the researchers note, must be reduced at least two times in order to avoid the massive emergence of new strains of bacteria resistant to the action of "antibiotics of last resort."
To do this, van Bockel and his colleagues propose to introduce restrictions on the maximum amount of antibiotics that can be given to an animal at a level of 50 micrograms per kilogram of body weight, which will reduce their consumption by 64%.
In addition, the authorities of all countries of the world can introduce special taxes and excise taxes on agricultural antibiotics, which will make their active use unprofitable for farmers, which will reduce their consumption by another 31%. In addition, if residents of the United States and some other countries reduce the proportion of meat in their diet, then this figure will fall by another 22%.
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As scientists admit, all these measures cannot be fully implemented, especially in developing countries where meat grown on antibiotics helps farmers to survive. On the other hand, even if only two countries, the United States and China, begin to comply with these instructions, the development of "super-bacteria" will drastically slow down, and humanity will have time to create a means of combating them.