Last month, I attended the Alltech
ONE ideas conference. Alltech
is a global company that produces lots of different products that may be used
in many segments of agriculture. Every year, they host a group of bloggers to
their conference and ask us to write about what we learned. This was my fourth
year to attend, and I would love for you to see what I’ve learned at previous
Alltech conferences.
This year, several of the sessions I attended covered the
topic of antibiotics. Alltech is a forward-thinking company that is working to
reduce the use of antibiotics in food production. They offer feed supplements that
farmers can use to keep their animals healthy and productive rather than using
antibiotics.
There were also several discussions about sustainable energy
and the use of fossil fuels. During one of those discussions, the speaker,
Ramez Naam, shared a quote from a former oil minister of Saudi Arabia.
He said, “The stone
age came to an end, not because we had a lack of stones, and the oil age will
come to an end not because we have a lack of oil.”
That discussion was about oil and energy, but I think that
the premise can be applied to antibiotics.
Agriculture has changed a great deal in the past 6 decades.
Our population is growing at a staggering rate, and farmers have had to adapt
to meet the demands for food in our world. Getting to this point in agriculture
has taken lots of tools and one of those tools has been and still is
antibiotics.
I have written about antibiotics
before. People have trouble understanding the use of antibiotics in food
production; the fact that some bacteria adapt to become resistant to them, and
that farmers use antibiotics to help keep their animals healthy and are careful
to treat their animals in such a way that antibiotic residues don’t end up in
our meat. Farmers and consumers have concerns about bacteria becoming resistant
to antibiotics, and, in food production, antibiotics are at the front of
everyone’s mind.
We have to remember that the Stone Age didn’t end overnight.
People slowly figured out new and more efficient ways of doing things. They
found new materials and new ways to use old materials. Then, their ideas spread
around the world.
We can’t expect the use of antibiotics to end overnight
either, but things are happening quickly. Farmers are using a whole-systems
approach to improve animal health. Meanwhile, animal scientists are figuring
out new ways to help farmers produce healthier animals without the use of
antibiotics or with a vastly reduced use of antibiotics.
At the conference, Dr. Aiden Connolly, talked about several
ways that animals may be managed to help reduce or eliminate the use of
antibiotics.
Genetics:
Everyone has that friend who never gets sick. The same happens in the animal
world. Some animals are just better at fighting disease on their own. Now, we
have the ability to find those specific genes in animals and select for them.
By breeding the healthiest females to the healthiest males, and eliminating the
more sickly ones, fewer animals will get sick and fewer will need antibiotics.
Biosecurity – health
management: In a previous post about antibiotics, I jokingly mentioned that
you can’t teach pigs to wash their hooves, but we can manage the humans and the
equipment going in and out of farms to keep disease from spreading.
In April, I went to two pig farms in one day, and I took
four showers that day. On modern swine and sometimes poultry farms, humans are
required to shower in and shower out. That means you take a shower, and only
wear clothes that belong to the farm. Even underwear (TMI, sorry). Other
precautions included washing the vehicles that we drove every time we entered a
new farm, keeping wildlife away, and limiting visitors.
Sanitation and reduced contamination will reduce the
exposure of animals to bacteria that cause disease, and will reduce the need to
treat those animals with antibiotics.
Nutrition:
Keeping animals well-fed and healthy will help their bodies naturally fight
disease. Scientists are also learning how to create an environment in the
animal that promotes health and fights bacteria without antibiotics.
Gut health and the Microbiome: Last year I wrote a post about the human
microbiome, but animals each have their own microbiome. Dr. Stephen
Collett, from the University of Georgia, spoke at the conference and he said
that when we choose animals for breeding, we are not only selecting their
genetics, but also their microbiome. Mothers pass their healthy bacteria to
their babies, and all animals share it in their barns, pens, and fields.
The interactive effect of a healthy gut and nutrition is so
important. Farmers are learning to feed the good bacteria to fight the bad
ones. Dr. Collett said, “We can’t win the war on disease by killing, we have to
win by multiplying. We have to nurture what we want.” Using nutrition to feed
the healthy bacteria will lessen the need for antibiotics to fight the bad
bacteria.
The day after the conference, I watched a webinar by some animal
scientists from Texas A&M. They spoke about bacteriophages, viruses that kill
specific bacteria. They exist everywhere in nature. Some animals naturally
carry them in their guts to help them fight bacteria that might make them sick.
Obviously, bacteriophages are part of the microbiome. Scientists are learning
more about them and how they can help fight bacteria every day.
Keep moving forward.
Farmers and scientists are adapting every day to how we
fight disease and pathogens in food animals. With every new break through, we
have another tool in our toolbox to fight dangerous bacteria. One of the
exciting things about working in the food industry is that it is constantly
changing.
There is no way our industry is ready to completely stop
using antibiotics, but we are finding ways to use fewer antibiotics all the
time. The whole industry will continue to keep moving forward to a new age of
total animal health.
The founder and CEO of Alltech, Dr. Pearse Lyons, has a
great quote that I think can be applied to the transition away from
antibiotics, “Don’t get it right. Get it going.” Changing the tools we use to
produce food for 9 billion people is not going to be easy, but we have to keep
moving forward. Get it going.
