The precautionary principle suggests that even if only antibiotic resistance were capable of spreading from animals to man in a few cases, it would be worth regulating the use of antibiotics in animals. On the one hand we might have 1-2% profits of the meat industry on the other hand we have the long term potential for the death of tens of thousands to millions of individuals because antibiotics stop working.
Fluroquinolines (such as ciprofloxacin) are used to treat Campylobacter infection, a disease which effects 1.4 million people in the United States each year and is contracted from eating undercooked chicken amongst other things. Flouroquinolines (such as enrofloxacin) also started being used in veterinary medicine, where their use led in the number of Camblobacter infections being antibiotic resistant going from 0% in 1992 to 41% in 2001. Based on this, the FDA moved to ban the use of enroflaxacin in poultry. What happened? The manufacturer Bayer, and their trade group, the Animal Health Industry sued. This kept enrofloxacin on the market for a further 5 years, during which time I estimate there would have been an additional 19,000 Fluroquinoline treatment failures, and numerous deaths, in humans. [Nelson, Chiller, Powers, and Angulo, 2007]
And what of the farm industries beloved profits? Let's say the regulation of antibiotics in the agricultural sector increases the price of meat by 5%? Then what? The demand elasticity for beef, chicken and pork, have been estimated at -0.27 to -0.974 [Fiala, 2006]. In every case this is greater than -1.0. What this means is that a 1% increase in the price of meat would result in a less than 1% reduction in the amount of meat consumed. Thus the actual dollar volume, and with it the profits to the industry would actually increase, not decrease under an antibiotic regulation regime. Picking the mid-point -0.6, gives a 0.4 x 5% = 2% increase in the dollar volume of meat sold, or $3b a year for a $160b/year industry. Consumers win, farmers win, why hasn't this happened?
