Tom Philpott’s "How Factory Farms Play Chicken with Antibiotics" Article Analysis Essay Example

Throughout Tom Philpott’s essay, How Factory Farms Play Chicken with Antibiotics, he discusses how antibiotic overuse is resulting in the resistance to the drugs, lessening of their effectiveness towards serious infections. The reason for this is that “antibiotic use in factory farms isn’t mostly a matter of keeping animals healthy” (Philpott), they are used to speed growth and fatten animals, resulting in resistance to the antibiotics. In his visit to Perdue, the fourth largest poultry producer in the country, the company discovered ways that “the meat can be profitably mass-produced without drugs” (Philpott), presenting a significant challenge to competitors and almost eliminating their use of antibiotics. The overuse and misuse of antibiotics on factory farms is leading to an increase in resistance to essential drugs; this can be addressed by considering the overall health of the animals. 

A company experimented with vitamin B-12 to fatten chickens, it was discovered that the vitamin contained an antibiotic, aureomycin, which showed to improve the growth and production process. Consequently, it led to a health crisis. Antibiotics developed resistance to bacteria, that was then being transferred to the consumers of the products. Following similar reports in 1972, the FDA implemented guidelines requiring product manufacturers to prove they weren't contributing to resistance. Stuart Levy, attempted to conduct an experiment with hopes cause the “industry to rethink its profligate antibiotic use, or at least inspire the FDA to rein it in” (Philpott). However, this was not the case. Instead, the FDA added additional regulations that “effectively banned tetracycline and penicillin from animal feed” (Philpott), but this was put on hold to allow for further research by the House agriculture appropriations subcommittee.  

It has been known by public health authorities that drug resistance in human is connected to the dependency the meat industry holds on these antibiotics. The meat industries rely on these “medically important” antibiotics to the extent that 70% of the drugs are being depleted into these operations. However, the use of these essential drugs has been totally removed from the production taking place at Perdue in Delmarva.