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Do antibiotics used in food production worsen Crohn's?

"Industrial Food Animal Production, Antimicrobial Resistance, and Human Health" in Annual Review of Public Health (2008)
"Antimicrobial resistance is a major public health crisis, eroding the discovery of antimicrobials and their application to clinical medicine. There is a general lack of knowledge of the importance of agricultural antimicrobial use as a factor in antimicrobial resistance even among experts in medicine and public health. This review focuses on agricultural antimicrobial drug use as a major driver of antimicrobial resistance worldwide for four reasons: It is the largest use of antimicrobials worldwide; much of the use of antimicrobials in agriculture results in subtherapeutic exposures of bacteria; drugs of every important clinical class are utilized in agriculture; and human populations are exposed to antimicrobial-resistant pathogens via consumption of animal products as well as through widespread release into the environment."


"What Do We Feed to Food-Production Animals? A Review of Animal Feed Ingredients and Their Potential Impacts on Human Health" in Environ Health Perspect. (2007)
Antibiotics used in meat production include: tetracyclines, macrolides, fluoroquinolones, and streptogramins
"Data synthesis
Findings emphasize that current animal feeding practices can result in the presence of bacteria, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, prions, arsenicals, and dioxins in feed and animal-based food products. Despite a range of potential human health impacts that could ensue, there are significant data gaps that prevent comprehensive assessments of human health risks associated with animal feed. Limited data are collected at the federal or state level concerning the amounts of specific ingredients used in animal feed, and there are insufficient surveillance systems to monitor etiologic agents “from farm to fork.”
Conclusions
Increased funding for integrated veterinary and human health surveillance systems and increased collaboration among feed professionals, animal producers, and veterinary and public health officials is necessary to effectively address these issues."
"The use of antibiotics in animal feed is also a public health concern. Antibiotics are administered at nontherapeutic levels in feed and water to promote growth and improve feed efficiency. This practice has been shown to select for antibiotic resistance in both commensal and pathogenic bacteria in a) the animals themselves (Aarestrup et al. 2000; Bager et al. 1997; Gorbach 2001; Wegener 2003); b) subsequent animal-based food products (Hayes et al. 2003; White et al. 2001); andc) water, air, and soil samples collected around large-scale animal feeding operations (Chapin et al. 2005; Chee-Sanford et al. 2001; Gibbs et al. 2006; Jensen et al. 2002)."
"Although the use of nontherapeutic levels of antibiotics in animal feed is approved and regulated by the FDA (2004), there is no U.S. data collection system regarding the specific types and amounts of antibiotics that are used for this purpose. In response to this significant data gap, several estimates of nontherapeutic antibiotic usage have been published based on USDA livestock production data and FDA antibiotic usage regulations. For example, Mellon et al. (2001) estimated that as much as 60–80% of antibiotics produced in the United States are administered in feed to healthy livestock at nontherapeutic levels. Many of these antibiotics are the same compounds that are administered to humans in clinical settings, and include tetracyclines, macrolides, streptogramins, and fluoroquinolones (FDA 2004). Additional information regarding the types and amounts of antibiotics used in U.S. livestock is available in AAFCO (2004), FDA (2004), and Mellon et al. (2001)."
"Similar to the challenge of determining whether human bacterial illnesses are associated with contaminated animal feed, there are insufficient data available to determine the percentage of antibiotic-resistant human bacterial infections that are attributed to animal feeding practices versus practices and behaviors occurring in human clinical settings."
"... there is evidence that antibiotic-resistant bacteria can be transmitted from swine and poultry to humans."
"Beyond bacterial infections, a chronic human health risk that has been linked to animal feeding practices is variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), a novel human neuro-degenerative prion disease that is currently untreatable and fatal (Collinge 1999)."

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