This chapter explores the development of antibiotic use and perceptions in US agriculture. During the 1970s, animal concentrations and antibiotic use in American livestock production increased significantly. Perceiving antibiotics as an essential disease insurance in times of diminishing profits, producers opposed external interventions into agricultural practice. Concerns about agricultural AMR selection were far less pronounced than concerns about drug residues. While industry-coordinated farmer protest toppled 1970s AGP restrictions, an economic crisis, ongoing environmentalist criticism, and organic farmers’ commercial success led to a “greening” of agricultural discourse from the 1980s onward. This greening was, however, not accompanied by wider reforms of production systems or of antibiotic infrastructures. Although contemporary surveys indicate that many farmers were not as antibiotic dependent as claimed by parts of the national press, the agricultural media and farm lobby organizations joined pharmaceutical companies in calling for a rollback of federal regulations during the 1990s. Outcomes were mixed: while official intervention has been minimized and antibiotic access mostly defended, smaller producers have been forced out of a market increasingly dominated by a small number of vertically integrated corporations.
Planting from Fencerow to Fencerow
Economically, the years around 1970 were a good time for US agriculture: farmers’ incomes increased because of rising commodity prices,1 the 1970 Agriculture Act enshrined federal support, and USDA Secretary Earl Butz secured an unprecedented federal appropriation of $8.1 billion in 1971. Emboldened by neo-Malthusian scenarios of overpopulation and Soviet grain purchases, Butz exhorted US farmers to plant “from fencerow to fencerow.”2 This message was passed on via farm magazines. Progressive Farmer speculated that the 1970s would be “the time when American agriculture strikes out on a bold new course of influence and prosperity.”3 Family farmers would, however, only survive if they fully engaged in “a new, aggressive, agricultural capitalism”4 and became more efficient.
Butz’s exhortations for aggressive efficiency increases occurred against a backdrop of dramatic changes that had occurred in US farming and livestock production since around 1960. Between 1959 and 1969, annual cattle and calf sales had increased by about 45.6 percent to over 74 million animals, hog and pig sales by about 10.4 percent to over 89 million animals, and broiler and meat-type chicken sales by about 71.8 percent to over 2.4 billion animals. During the same period, the number of cattle and calf farms had, however, decreased by almost a million to 1,719,403, hog and pig farms by over a million to 686,097, and broiler producers by almost 10,000 to 33,757. Remaining farms were not only producing greater numbers of animals but also faced rising expenses for feedstuffs, wages, and chemicals.5
Over the next decade, ongoing pressure to improve the efficiency of production methods and stay in control of expenses would have a significant impact on farm animals, environments, and ownership. According to historian Chris Mayda, American hog production was increasingly dominated by specialized operations: “economic breeding … limited the breeds in production, so that hogs, like some crops, developed into monoculture.”6 Attempting to increase feed efficiency and minimize disease, producers created “closed herds” in ventilated buildings. The cost of necessary investments also meant that external investors and vertically integrated larger companies began to make inroads into the pork sector. Volatile markets and shifting consumer preferences also began to transform 1970s beef production with an increasing amount of animals being fattened in concentrated feedlots.7 Of all US livestock sectors, the poultry sector was by far the most intensive and integrated with large corporations controlling as much as 90 percent of broiler production from the early 1960s onward. Concentrated in the US South, carefully bred and medicated birds were fed cheap soy or corn meal in large-scale confined operations, which would further intensify throughout the 1970s.8
Agricultural intensification and expansion caused tensions between US farmers and environmentalists (chapter 7). During the early 1970s, the Nixon administration’s attempts to burnish its environmentalist credentials by creating the EPA and banning the insecticide DDT proved particularly contentious.9 Although some farmers expressed health concerns about chemical production helpers,10 the wider agricultural community rejected precautionary bans in favor of already familiar cost-benefit evaluations (chapter 3): DDT and other chemicals might be dangerous, but if used responsibly according to industry labels, benefits outweighed risks. In 1970, Progressive Farmer claimed, “millions of people now living in good health would be dead or anemic cripples if it were not for DDT.”11 Most agricultural commentators were thus appalled when the EPA banned DDT in 1972.12 According to Kenneth Hood of the American Farm Bureau, the “disaster lobby” was “working overtime”13 to deprive up to 50 million Americans of food by banning chemical pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, and drugs. Others warned that the DDT ban might be a first step toward mandatory organic farming.14
Defending Antibiotics
Farmers’ perceived defeat over DDT had significant implications for simultaneous FDA attempts to restrict AGPs. Whereas British corporatism relied on agricultural self-policing and moderation in exchange for participation in compromise-oriented problem-solving (chapter 6), US farm organizations lacked incentives to tone down public attacks on “overzealous” regulators. Throughout the 1970s, domino scenarios according to which any substance ban would engender further bans made organizations like the American Farm Bureau support pharmaceutical companies’ polarizing battles against AGP bans. With US veterinarians failing to harness AMR concerns to gain control over antibiotic access,15 the only sustained inner-agricultural criticism of antibiotics came from organic farmers.
Ensuing battles over antibiotic access took place against a background of rapidly expanding consumption on US farms. The contemporary growth of nontherapeutic antibiotic use was particularly dramatic. According to FDA figures from 1978, 4.16 million pounds of antibiotics had been produced in the United States in 1960, of which about 1.2 million pounds (about 29 percent) were added to feeds. Ten years later, about 7.3 million pounds of antibiotics (about 43.1 percent of total production) were added to feeds. By 1975, industry figures indicated that nonmedicinal usage accounted for 48.6 percent of total US antibiotic production.16 Although data on therapeutic antibiotic use is limited and the NAS published higher historical estimates of nontherapeutic antibiotic use in 1980,17 it is likely that total nonhuman use overtook US human antibiotic use during the 1970s.
Antibiotic consumption varied between livestock sectors. According to contemporary manuals and USDA data, US broiler rations contained between 4 and 10 grams of antibiotics per ton of feed. Hog rations usually contained one or more antibiotics (usually penicillin, chlor- and oxytetracycline, or bacitracin). Piglets would receive 44 milligrams of antibiotics per kilogram of diet, growing pigs 11 to 22 milligrams per kilogram of diet, and finishing pigs around 11 milligrams per kilogram of diet.18 A significant increase of antibiotic consumption occurred in US cattle production. Starting in the mid-1950s, intensive feedlots expanded from the grain-rich Corn Belt to locations across the United States. Whereas 7,535,000 cattle were “on feed” in 1960, the number increased by about 75 percent to 13,190,000 in 1970. Feedlot conditions were conducive to antibiotic use. During the 1950s, higher-dosed antibiotic injections were used to treat footrot (infected sores on legs) and other infections in individual animals. However, in a departure from earlier recommendations, the second half of the 1960s saw antibiotics like chlortetracycline, oxytetracycline, and zinc bacitracin routinely included in cattle rations at about 20 to 25 milligrams per 100 kilograms of live weight per day. Antibiotic feeds were said to counteract meat quality problems caused by the popular hormonal growth promoter DES. At concentrations of 70 milligrams per head per day, antibiotics were also used to prevent liver abscesses caused by high-grain diets. Cyanamid’s AS-700 (350 milligrams chlortetracycline and 360 milligrams sulfamethazine) proved popular against “shipping fever” and was also used to accustom new cows to feedlot conditions. Antibiotic consumption also increased in replacement herds with most dairy and veal calves receiving medicated milk replacers and calf starters.19
Despite declining cattle numbers, antibiotic use increased throughout the 1970s. This was due to a new group of antibiotics called ionophores. The ionophore monensin (Coban/Rumensin) was first approved as a coccidiostat for poultry in 1971 and then as a feed additive against bloat and coccidiosis in cattle in 1975. Ionophore additives increased propionic acid production in cows’ rumens and improved the fermentation and conversion of high-roughage and high-grain diets. Within ten years of monensin’s licensing, ionophores were fed to over 90 percent of US feedlot cattle.20
In all livestock sectors, routine therapeutic and nontherapeutic antibiotic use continued to be promoted by agricultural manuals, farming magazines, and the pharmaceutical industry.21 According to Lancaster Farming, antibiotics were part of a modern farmer’s identity: “A farmer is a paradox. He is an ‘over-alled’ executive with his home his office; a scientist using fertilizer attachments; a purchasing agent in an old straw hat; a personnel director with grease under his fingernails; a dietitian with a passion for alfalfa, animals and antibiotics, a production expert faced with a surplus, and a manager battling the cost-price squeeze.”22 In contrast to regular warnings in British farming publications (chapter 6), US commentators rarely discussed AMR hazards. If AMR was mentioned, it was usually in the context of drug residues in food or the need for more efficient antibiotic use or drug combinations to control infections.23 According to mainstream opinion, antibiotics’ prime hazard consisted of residues and inefficient use.
The 1970s saw significant increases of antibiotic use on US cattle feedlots. Cyanamid advertisement, Farm Journal, 1979.
Many agricultural commentators were thus shocked when the FDA task force recommended AGP bans in early 1972. Unless they were proven safe and efficacious, low-dosed tetracycline, penicillin, streptomycin, dihydrostreptomycin, and sulfonamide feeds would be banned for poultry on January 1, 1973, and for sheep, cattle, and swine on July 1, 1973. Other medically relevant antibiotics would be restricted after December 31, 1973.24 Taken aback, Wallaces Farmer acknowledged, “Evidence indicates using antibiotics in food-producing animals promotes Salmonella and the development of the R factor (resistant) bacteria.”25 It seemed unlikely that bans could be averted by industry safety trials: “it doesn’t seem likely that FDA will back off much.”26 Iowa State nutritionist Vaughn Speer agreed with the FDA: “I think the recommendations that certain antibiotics be reserved for human use is a good one. I can’t argue with that.”27
Initial agricultural shock was soon replaced by preformulated industry protest. Since the 1969 Swann report, companies like American Cyanamid had prepared for potential FDA action by commissioning counter science.28 During a time of growing public distrust of industry influence (chapter 8), pharmaceutical manufacturers, however, knew that classic political lobbying would only go so far. To be effective in Washington, they also had to mobilize a broader popular alliance among farmers, agricultural organizations, and the agriculture-minded public. Founded in 1941 and funded by companies producing more than 90 percent of US veterinary pharmaceuticals and feed additives, the Animal Health Institute (AHI) soon emerged as the most important voice defending AGPs among rural audiences. In magazines like Lancaster Farming, AHI experts “emphatically disagree[d] with most of” the FDA task force report: “If one accepts the Task Force premise that the presence of resistant bacteria in animals constitutes a potential human health hazard … then the removal of recognized effective prophylactic use of antibacterial agents creates a real potential human health hazard, since it follows logically that such removal will lead to an increase in incidence of various animal bacterial diseases.”29
America’s agricultural establishment soon joined pharmaceutical companies’ pro-antibiotic campaign. “Reaffirming their abiding faith in American constitutional government, the private enterprise system, and man’s inalienable right to worship God,” the 1972 Farm Bureau assembly voted to oppose “a complete ban on the use of any agricultural drug and chemical unless it can be demonstrated positively … that the use of such product represents a clear and present danger to health or that such use would seriously jeopardize our environment.”30 Organized opposition to AGP bans spread quickly. Merging with preexisting criticism of environmentalism, reporting in the US farming press became almost homogenous in its criticism of statutory restrictions. Seven months after endorsing the FDA’s AGP bans, nutritionist Vaughn Speer suddenly claimed, “[the] possibility [of AMR transfer] has been thoroughly examined and there is no scientific evidence that resistance is transferred this way.”31 Meanwhile, magazines like Farmers Weekly Review encouraged readers to send written objections to the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW).32
AGP bans were also criticized by the USDA (chapter 10). According to USDA Secretary Earl Butz, banning antibiotics and other chemicals would force organic agriculture and starvation on the United States.33 Responding to the 1972 task force report, the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) published its own antibiotic review. The ARS review recapitulated AGPs’ alleged economic advantages and maintained that it was unclear whether resistant organisms and genes in animals constituted a health threat. Failing to cite landmark British AMR publications, the ARS noted that long-term direct exposure of humans to low-dosed antibiotics had not resulted in harm. It was true that AMR could be transferred between enteric bacteria. However, AGPs’ ongoing efficacy and the isolation of resistant organisms from animals unexposed to antibiotics indicated that agricultural AMR was “natural,” widespread, and therefore not an important public health hazard.34
Despite mounting agro-industrial pressure, it initially seemed as though the FDA would follow through with AGP withdrawals. In July 1972, Progressive Farmer warned, “stricter regulation of antibiotics in feed look[s] 99 percent certain.”35 In September, Farm Bureau members proposed voluntary drug compliance certification to ward off further federal intervention: “Federal authorities have taken DDT away from your use completely …. If livestock producers are to continue benefitting from animal health products, they must use them properly and certify that they are doing so. England’s Swann Report and the United States’ FDA Task Force Report challenged the ability of farmers and ranchers to carry out this responsibility.”36 However, all was not lost. Following the 1972 DDT ban, agricultural observers were beginning to discern cracks in federal agencies’ willingness and ability to impose substance restrictions. Senior FDA officials’ lackluster support for AGP bans and indecisive handling of contemporary DES bans played an important role in maintaining agro-industrial morale.37 Bombarding officials and agricultural-minded members of Congress with letters and critical reviews, antibiotic supporters were relieved when the FDA quietly loosened AGP safety review requirements in 1973 (chapter 10).
Victory over FDA bans coincided with darkening economic outlooks. In 1973, the oil crisis and rising inflation brought a return of the agricultural cost-price squeeze. Between 1973 and 1975, US farmers’ net income declined from $34.3 to $25.5 billion. Livestock production was hit hard. Although broiler sales continued to increase, sales of cattle, calves, and pigs declined.38 Faithful to Earl Butz’s motto “get big or get out,” producers either participated in a further round of agricultural intensification or left agriculture altogether.39 Those remaining increased their antibiotic use. In 1978, US livestock producers used about 5.58 million kilograms of antibiotics (excluding sulfonamides) in feeds and for other nontherapeutic applications (about 48 percent of total US antibiotic production).40 Higher-dosed therapeutics also remained popular. In 1978, veterinary county agent Alan Bair resignedly recounted the case of a young farmer who used several antibiotics at once, did not read labels, and purchased “whatever the feedman thought was best that week.”41 Bair’s description of mass-antibiotic use was no exaggeration. In 1977, a Wallaces Farmer reader poll found that 67 percent of farmers regularly fed drugs to growing pigs and only 7 percent did not feed drugs at all. In a matter-of-fact statement, one farmer noted: “I need drugs to help with production. Keeping the hogs healthy is the only way we can make a living and provide consumers with meat.”42
Inner-agricultural criticism of rising antibiotic use remained minimal. Most farming commentators emphasized that antibiotic access was absolutely “vital to [the] production of food.”43 Pharmaceutical lobbyists also continued to mobilize against potential restrictions. In 1974, Philip Connell, president of American Cyanamid’s Agricultural Division, warned about threats to the “web of technology”44 underpinning global food production. AGP bans would force US consumers to pay $2.1 billion more for meat (about $10.26 per person) per year. Farmers would need 1.3 million additional acres to maintain 1970 levels of beef and pork production.45 USDA Secretary Earl Butz echoed industry warnings about threats to global food security: “Every new regulation that hampers agricultural production … drives another nail into the collective coffin of mankind.”46 There was even a certain pride in the amount of antibiotics being consumed in the United States. In 1978, Lancaster Farmer described an impressionable West German delegation’s visit of Pennsylvania farms. During one tour, “more than a few Germans pointed excitedly at a bucketful antibiotics that they found in the swine producer’s service room. ‘That’s forbidden in Germany,’ they announced emphatically.”47 The restrictive nature of German regulations was then elaborated.
Although AMR was increasingly mentioned as a driver of federal intervention, it was rarely acknowledged as a genuine hazard. Mirroring public concerns, agricultural commentators instead focused on residue problems resulting from sulfamethazine contaminated feeds, drugged “downer cattle,” and more sensitive USDA testing.48 Livestock manuals similarly either failed to mention AMR or downplayed hazards.49 In 1978, the fifth edition of Stockman’s Handbook noted: “Some folks object to the continued use of low levels of antibiotics in feeds on the ground that resistant pathogenic strains of microorganisms might develop …. Although it is true that microbial resistance to antibiotics does occur, there is no scientific evidence that more virulent pathogens have evolved …. As a matter of fact, the evidence shows that resistant strains are nearly always less virulent.”50
Without an adjustment of risk perceptions, US agricultural circles not only remained complacent about growing antibiotic infrastructures but also supported pharmaceutical campaigning against renewed FDA attempts to ban AGPs in 1977 (chapter 10). Their previous victory over the 1972 task force report had equipped campaigners with an effective set of protest tools. With only few readers and commentators voicing AMR concerns,51 farming magazines portrayed FDA proposals as an irrational attack on “scientific” production. Commentators warned about antibiotic bans’ effect on inflation and global food supplies, criticized inefficacious AGP substitutes, and challenged AMR research.52 Ignoring that American veterinarians’ economic decline had been facilitated by unrestricted drug access, agro-industrial representatives also argued that there were too few veterinarians to prescribe antibiotics after AGP bans. While some called on the FDA to allow “feed manufacturers to fill prescriptions at doses not prescribed by law,”53 American Cyanamid warned that banning AGPs would harm 210,000 smaller farmers without veterinary service contracts.54 Similar to 1972, lobbyists maximized pressure by calling on farmers and rural communities to send preformulated protest letters to officials and politicians in Washington.55
Victory over FDA measures seemed close after Congress stalled AGP bans in mid-1978. By early 1979, farming magazines were encouraging readers to pressure representatives to oppose all three contemporary FDA proceedings against nitrites, DES, and antibiotics.56 Despite FDA attempts to convince producers of antibiotic restrictions, the farming media consistently prioritized information supplied by industry think tanks like CAST.57 According to Progressive Farmer, CAST researcher Virgil Hays did not “cotton much to the theoretical possibility that resistant organisms … may be transferred to man.”58 Even articles addressing the difficulties of treating resistant infections on farms did not problematize the reasons behind AMR proliferation and focused on advocating hygiene and different drugs.59
Coordinated agro-industrial resistance was effective both in maintaining agricultural cohesion and in achieving political goals. After two years of intense conflict with the FDA, American farmers only lost the battle over DES (chapter 10). In April 1980, Farm Journal announced that a congressionally mandated NAS antibiotic review had concluded that “the test probably doesn’t exist that can prove or disprove the safety of using low levels of penicillin or tetracyclines.”60 According to the USDA’s Farmline journal, “possible legal opposition, and the need for further study”61 should delay any regulations for at least several years. However, victory came at a price. In contrast to corporatist British decision-making (chapters 6 and 12), aggressive public opposition to FDA restrictions fractured already porous ties between the agricultural community and US regulators and AMR experts. Access to AGPs had been defended by using counter science and personal attacks to undermine data, critical scientists, and the authority of public institutions. By allying with the pharmaceutical industry and propagating a polarizing mix of regulation hostility and distrust in microbiological findings, agricultural organizations, commentators, and producers missed an opportunity to rethink the entwined path-dependencies of intensification and growing antibiotic infrastructures. Chances for future antibiotic compromise and level-headed encounters with critics had diminished. Further conflict seemed likely.
A Crisis of Intensification
Ongoing AGP access did little to alleviate an emerging economic crisis. During the 1980s, overproduction and sinking commodity prices triggered a long agricultural downturn. Despite its antiregulatory agenda, the Reagan administration was repeatedly forced to expand subsidies to alleviate farmers’ plight. Between 1980 and 1985, the total cost of the US farm program rose to more than $20 billion. However, deficit purchases and storage programs failed to raise commodity prices and stimulated further overproduction. Being able to decrease production costs by increasing efficiency became a determinant of agricultural survival. In many cases, necessary investments were made by taking on debt. Whereas US farm debt had totaled $60 billion in 1972, it totaled an astonishing $216 billion in 1983.62 Unable to service debts, many farmers were either forced to leave agriculture or become employees of agribusiness corporations. By the late 1980s, the fabric of US farming had changed: similar to the Dust Bowl era, 42 percent of farmland was operated under rental agreements, and corporations and investors had taken over many farm operations.63
In the US livestock sector, the economic crisis catalyzed existing trends toward confined, concentrated, and integrated production. In pig husbandry, so-called hog factories became common. Whereas producers raising 1,000 or more animals per year accounted for about 7 percent of US hog production in 1964, this number had already risen to 40 percent in 1979.64 By 1986, seven out of ten Iowa hogs were raised in confined systems.65 New total confinement units mirrored Damon Catron’s 1940s fantasies of Fordist animal production: housed according to life stages and function (breeding or fattening), pigs were fed tailored diets and progressed down an assembly line from one specialized building to the next (farrowing, nursery, grower, and finisher) before being transported to the abattoir.66 Accelerating 1970s trends, expensive new high-tech facilities were often financed and built by large corporations with whom farmers contracted to produce animals they no longer owned.67 This form of vertical integration was already commonplace in the US poultry sector with the same companies often supplying chicks, specifying housing, producing feeds, and slaughtering and processing animals.68 By the mid-1980s nearly all US chicken broilers and 80 percent of eggs and turkeys were being produced in vertically integrated operations.69
Although accelerating intensification triggered renewed clashes with environmentalists and concerned consumers, aggressive agro-pharmaceutical rhetoric did not always match producers’ personal views. During the mid-1970s and 1980s, economic pressure made growing numbers of smaller conventional producers realize that farming’s future would be for the few and not for the many. Ignoring ongoing attacks on organic farming by agricultural officials and commentators, they began to pay attention to the booming market for “natural” food (chapter 7). Growing mainstream interest gradually carried over into the agricultural press. In 1975, Lancaster Farming from Pennsylvania began to print articles by local farmer—and publisher—Robert Rodale on organic gardening and lifestyle. Initially, these articles were followed by disclaimers distancing Lancaster Farming from Rodale’s views.70 With organic farming becoming more conventional regarding its supply chains and business models, the need for such disclaimers diminished. In 1981, Indiana Prairie Farmer told readers not to “dismiss organic farming as merely a fad or joke”—organic methods could reduce use of “insecticides, herbicides, growth regulators, and fertilizers.”71
A 1980 USDA review played a significant role in changing wider conventional attitudes toward organic methods. Despite questioning organic health claims, the review gave a balanced overview of the organic sector. While most organic farms were relatively small (10 to 50 acres), some larger operations (100 to 1,500 acres) had also adopted organic methods. The review debunked conventional clichés by noting that most organic farms were well managed, productive, and had not regressed to prewar standards. In terms of pesticide management and crop rotation, organic farmers often adhered to best management practices, although farms’ overall ratio of labor input to yield was worse than in conventional systems.72 In the case of livestock production, most organic farmers did not feed hormones and only used antibiotics to treat individual animals. The size of an organic farm’s grain and hay production usually dictated the scale of animal production. Most notably, organic farmers did not “push” animals to achieve the highest rate of gain and market them in the shortest possible time: “A number of farmers reported that with previous chemical-intensive programs they had often incurred a higher rate of birth mortality, decreased reproductive efficiency, and increased respiratory ailments among their livestock, resulting in lower production, and higher veterinary costs.”73 According to the USDA’s reviewers, organic methods warranted serious attention from agricultural officials and conventional producers alike. One year later, an organic research budget was integrated into the 1981 farm bill.74
Growing agricultural acceptance of organic farming as a tolerable market niche was paralleled by a plurality of opinions regarding other conventional production methods. In the case of agricultural antibiotics, two 1980s surveys indicate that American conventional farmers’ reasons for opposing antibiotic bans and attitudes toward antibiotic use were far more nuanced than the uniform public front of agro-pharmaceutical lobbyism suggests. The first industry-sponsored survey of 1,051 Missouri livestock producers was conducted in 1981: 14 percent of respondents said that they always purchased feed with antibiotics, 48 percent claimed to sometimes do so, and 24 percent said that they never did so (surprisingly, 14 percent did not know whether their feeds contained antibiotics or not). Mirroring official consumption statistics, responses varied according to livestock sector: 14 percent of beef producers always and 50 percent sometimes purchased antibiotic feeds (64 percent total); 19 percent of poultry producers always and 51 percent sometimes purchased antibiotic feeds (70 percent total); 27 percent of pork producers always and 58 percent sometimes purchased antibiotic feeds (85 percent total). Interestingly, large pork producers tended to buy antibiotic feeds less frequently than smaller or medium producers. The survey also asked farmers about the impact AGP bans would have on their business. Answers were very different from the apocalyptic picture being painted by industry lobbyists. Of surveyed farmers, only 24 percent said that bans would have a serious impact on their operations; 47 percent did not think bans would have serious effects; and 29 percent thought that bans would have no effect. Farmers’ risk perceptions were difficult to judge. When asked whether they believed that using antibiotics undermined future antibiotic treatments, 48 percent responded “don’t know,” 32 percent said yes, and only 20 percent said no. Of the 24 percent of farmers who did not purchase antibiotic feeds, 48 percent believed that “more harm than good” resulted from antibiotic use, 19 percent believed that AGPs were not effective, and 29 percent believed that they were too expensive.75
A 1982 survey of 642 New York livestock producers confirmed many of these findings. Cornell PhD Gilbert Wayne Gillespie Jr. discovered that trust in AGP efficacy for growth promotion was far smaller than suggested by agro-industrial lobbyists and that farmers purchased AGPs—which had initially been licensed as subtherapeutic additives—as a cheap risk insurance against disease. He also found that American farmers’ opposition to AGP bans and support of industry campaigning was primarily ideological: “Ideology appears to be a major source of opposition to government regulation of agricultural chemicals and pharmaceuticals in general, with the important antecedent variables being perceptions of negative side-effects from use of these substances, political liberalism, and an orientation toward accepting economic risk in farming. Farm debt is the only structural variable with a significant effect.”76 Similar to Missouri, New York poultry and swine producers used the most AGPs. Larger swine, dairy, and beef producers tended to use more antibiotics than smaller producers while large poultry producers with modern facilities used less drugs than medium-sized ones. Gillespie also found that antibiotic users were more opposed to government regulation, less liberal, and tended to express more feelings of powerlessness than non-users.77 When asked why they used antibiotics, swine producers were most likely to cite productivity increases and disease prevention. Poultry producers cited disease prevention. Most livestock producers purchased AGPs as insurance against disease and not for growth promotion. Less than one-tenth of surveyed farmers believed that AGPs did more harm than good—AMR knowledge correlated with an endorsement of bans. Most non-users, however, simply thought that they did not need expensive AGPs.78
Although many US farmers did not believe that AGP bans would seriously affect business, post-DDT domino theories of substance restrictions and their ideological distaste for statutory interference made them support—or at least fail to oppose—aggressive agro-pharmaceutical defense of unrestricted antibiotic access. Responding to the NRDC petition and Scott Holmberg’s 1984 link of resistant salmonellosis to antibiotic feeds, pharmaceutical companies, CAST, the AHI, farm organizations, and supportive USDA officials launched a familiar broadside of economic doomsday warnings and counter science to prevent restrictions (chapter 10).79 In 1985, Farm Bureau News (FBNews) questioned Holmberg’s link between antibiotic use and human illness: “other factors could have caused the outbreak, … a direct link was never shown (The resistant Salmonella apparently came from an adjacent dairy farm, where no antibiotics were used).”80 In Congress, Farm Bureau representatives claimed that farmers would immediately abandon AGPs if their harmfulness was proven: “If the potential hazard to humans is as great as some people claim, why haven’t there been more cases of human illness.”81 Others noted that banning AGPs but leaving therapeutic antibiotic use—primarily in human medicine—unreformed would be ineffective. For FBNews, it seemed likely that rising AMR was less due to on-farm use and “probably more due to [antibiotics’] prolific use for treating and preventing human infection.”82 The failure of British AGP bans to curb AMR was similarly mobilized.83
Not all conventional and pharmaceutical producers thought that opposing AGP bans was in their best interest. Similar to Britain (chapter 7), companies producing nontherapeutic AGPs had no incentive to protect penicillin and tetracycline AGPs at all costs. In 1984, American Hoechst, the company marketing flavomycin (bambermycin), complained that the medicated feed controversy was giving all antibiotics a bad name.84 Suffering from consumers’ increasing preference for “healthy” poultry meat and less reliant on medically relevant AGPs, cattle producers also attempted to gain a sales advantage by discontinuing the use of antibiotic classes that were not crucial to production. In 1985, the National Cattlemen’s Association announced that members would discontinue the feeding of tetracyclines—but not of penicillin—“until it can be resolved whether their use causes health problems in humans.”85 Eliciting hostile responses from other livestock groups,86 cattle producers, however, stressed that they would continue to oppose federal statutory bans to discourage anti-chemical activists: “If a product can be taken off the market by inference instead of fact, why would anybody invest another $70 million to create a new product?”87
Margaret Heckler’s 1985 rejection of the NRDC petition prevented further agricultural discord. Although opposition to antibiotic-free market niches had weakened, US farmers and their representatives remained opposed to formal AGP bans. This opposition was less grounded in the belief that bans would harm production and more in a general ideological rejection of statutory interference. Most producers were relatively unconcerned about AMR and primarily viewed AGPs as an insurance against disease. Although trust in actual growth promotion was weakening, antibiotic feeds remained in demand. AHI figures indicate that US farmers used about 11 million pounds of antibacterial compounds in feeds in 1985 with tetracyclines proving the most popular.88
A Light-Green Rollback
US agriculture’s antibiotic infrastructures faced no further statutory challenge until the late 1990s. During the intervening period, economic pressure and changing consumer preferences nonetheless incentivized a gradual rapprochement between conventional farmers and external critics. The result was what Michael Bess has called a “light-green” transition whereby green ideas were partially absorbed into agricultural discourse and practice but also trimmed and jettisoned should they threaten core production models or statutory intervention. Both producers and environmentalists “emerged [neither] wholly satisfied nor utterly dismayed”89 from this process. By the end of the millennium, conventional farmers were happily marketing antibiotic-free produce but still resisting statutory antibiotic reform.
The “light-greening’ of US agriculture coincided with ongoing intensification and integration. Between 1987 and 1997, cattle and calf sales increased by about 2 percent to over 74 million animals, pig and hog sales grew by over 47 percent to over 142 million animals, and meat-type chicken sales increased by over 54 percent to over 6.7 billion animals. Animal increases were accompanied by a further decline in the number of farms producing milk, pork, and poultry and by rising production costs.90 Change was particularly dramatic in hog production where vertical integration, specialization, and economies of scale accounted for most productivity gains. Between the 1990s and early 2000s, the share of farms with 2,000 animals or more increased from less than 30 to 86 percent while farm numbers fell by over 70 percent from over 240,000 in 1992 to about 71,000 in 2009. Varying US state laws also fostered a geographic concentration of large-scale pig operations in sparsely populated low-income regions.91
Low profit margins, health warnings, and changing values made a growing number of conventional farmers partially reevaluate production methods. In 1990, Wallaces Farmer surveyed 200 farmers’ pesticide use. Of the 85 percent who reported changing pesticide management, 94 percent claimed to have done so for economic reasons, 80 percent because of environmental concerns, and 79 percent because of health concerns.92 Acknowledging that environmentalist values were becoming embedded in public opinion, farm organizations also launched major efforts to promote an image of US agriculture that was green and responsible.93 This greening was “light”: environmental measures were adopted if they did not threaten core practices or production philosophies. In some cases, agricultural commentators also tried to reframe environmentalism. According to FBNews, the term environmentalist was often used to describe “someone who favors locking up natural resources and opposes the use of chemicals,” however, it also meant “someone who cares about the environment”—“Then certainly you could apply the term to farmers and ranchers.”94
In the case of antibiotics, light green farming led to a renewed focus on “rational” drug use—but little criticism of wider antibiotic infrastructures. During the early 1990s, magazines like Successful Farming reacted to rising AMR warnings (chapter 9) by rehashing 1960s criticism of “irrational” antibiotic overuse as an inefficient waste of resources.95 Veterinary manuals also promoted improved diagnostics for more targeted antibiotic use.96 Although some advocated making farming less antibiotic dependent,97 most commentators focused criticism on individual abusers and saw no reason for wider reform. In 1992, the seventh edition of The Stockman’s Handbook continued to promote routine therapeutic and nontherapeutic antibiotic use. Claiming that eight of ten US food animals received drugs during their life and failing to mention resulting AMR risks, the manual noted that the list of approved agricultural antibiotics was long “and growing longer.”98 Although manuals targeting smaller producers featured more balanced risk assessments, they also emphasized “rational” drug use by enlightened producers rather than explicit antibiotic reductions.99
The light-greening of antibiotic use occurred parallel to ongoing Farm Bureau attacks on “environcrat”100 regulations and critics. Farmers and their representatives were happy to partially rethink and rebrand production systems but remained ideologically opposed to statutory regulations forcing them to do so. When Newt Gingrich’s 1994 “Republican revolution” ended the Democrats’ fifty-two-year hold on Congress, the Farm Bureau seized the opportunity to push for a rollback of limited precautionary regulations in favor of “flexible” cost-benefit assessments.101 Speaking to the Senate Agriculture Committee in 1995, Farm Bureau representatives blamed rural plight on a “federal regulatory juggernaut”: “[The Farm Bureau] supports four major regulatory reforms: risk assessment …; cost-benefit analysis …; private property compensation when Congress decides to override private interests …; and redirection of regulatory resources into worthwhile private sector incentives.”102 With Republicans controlling both houses and the Clinton administration favoring deregulation, industry pursued a strategy of shifting risk assessment burdens from officials to “rational” consumers on the private market.
Formidable aspects of US consumer legislation soon began to topple. In 1996, Congress passed the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) and abolished the Delaney Clause. Environmentalists and consumer advocates supported the FQPA because it ended the distinction between residues on raw and processed food, established low tolerances of a one-in-a-million cancer risk, introduced right-to-know provisions, and required reviews of existing standards. However, the FQPA also marked a significant victory for industry because it simplified regulatory procedures and ended zero-tolerance policies in favor of negotiable risk-benefit calculi.103
In the same year, industry also celebrated the passage of the aptly named Animal Drug Availability Act (ADAA).104 The ADAA had been heavily influenced by petitions from the AHI and American Veterinary Medical Association. Streamlining regulatory procedures, it redefined and reduced the number of efficacy and safety studies required for new animal drug applications. Although drugs were still prohibited from leaving nontolerated residues in food, the ADAA limited the time FDA officials had to review applications and mandated the creation of new tolerances.105 Significantly, the ADAA also loosened the extra-label provisions of the 1994 Animal Medicinal Drug Use Clarification Act. Whereas unsupervised extra-label drug use had previously been banned, new Veterinary Feed Directives (VFDs) enabled the extra-label addition of often higher-dosed drugs—like antibiotics—to commercial animal feeds after veterinary consultation. In effect, federal responsibility for defining safe medicated feed use via labels was handed over to individual veterinarians (chapter 10).106 Whether these veterinarians would always prioritize long-term public health interests over more immediate productivity concerns was unclear. American veterinarians were often employed by integrated feed and meat companies and studies showed that health-centered perspectives learned at school were often diluted in favor of productivity-centered perspectives once practitioners began working on farms.107 Similar to human medicine, what constituted “rational” veterinary antibiotic use was highly context dependent.
Voluntarist Victories
The loosening of US regulations coincided with new European AGP bans (chapter 13). By the late 1990s, the combination of diverging transatlantic regulations and new national AMR surveillance capabilities had ended the post-1985 status quo of antibiotic regulation in Washington. The result was a further wave of voluntarist light-green agricultural reforms. Although antibiotic consumption continued to increase and producers remained united in their opposition of statutory bans, they also reacted to consumer concerns by expanding antibiotic-free market niches. In public, agro-industrial lobbyists no longer categorically denied AMR hazards but instead pointed to market-driven ways of improving antibiotic stewardship and curbing AMR.
Occurring during a time of mass farm closures, renewed antibiotic conflicts made many smaller producers embrace market niches for antibiotic-free produce. In 1998, Wallaces Farmer published a survival guide for pig farmers: “This is a difficult column to write. We’ve always tried to keep a positive attitude and present ways producers can become more efficient, productive or profitable. But nothing we print will change the fact that the pork industry is going through a critical time …. some producers are finding a high-value niche for organically raised, antibiotic-free pork. It’s not for everyone, but it may be an idea to consider.”108
Successful Farming described how conventional livestock farmers had downscaled and transitioned to “all-natural” and antibiotic-free production.109 According to the magazine, this transition was not being driven by ideology but occurred “all in the name of survival.”110 A converted dairy farmer emphasized that there was no animosity between conventional and organic farmers: “we’re just selling milk here, folks.”111 If it occurred voluntarily, going “natural” was fully accepted within the agricultural community. Despite sales increases, its small size also meant the organic livestock sector did not seriously threaten the much larger conventional sector. By 2011, there were 106,181 certified organic beef cattle, 254,771 organic milk cattle, and 28,644,354 organic broilers in the United States.112 These numbers paled in comparison to the billions of animals produced on conventional farms.
For the large majority of producers remaining in conventional agriculture, further intensification usually entailed rising antibiotic consumption. However, in contrast to previous decades, data provided by the new National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (1996) made it increasingly difficult to deny farming’s role in selecting for AMR. Public fears of resistant “superbugs” also spread within the agricultural community. In 1999, an illustrated article on rural health in Successful Farming cited a CDC expert, who noted that agriculture was partially responsible for creating resistant microbial environments: “The same drugs prescribed for human health are widely used in livestock production …. Almost half of the 50 million pounds of US-produced antibiotics is used in animals, with the largest share mixed into feed to promote growth.”113 Faced with hard AMR surveillance data, agro-pharmaceutical lobbyists also shifted gears. Instead of claiming that there was no hazard, they launched a sustained battle for voluntarist instead of statutory solutions. While antibiotic stewardship was important, US agriculture would improve at its own light-green pace. Eight months after printing its AMR article, Successful Farming quoted the AHI’s Richard Carnevale on the necessity of continued antibiotic use. While Carnevale supported AMR research, he maintained that fifty years of experience had shown that farmers were capable of responsible antibiotic use and that AGPs did not constitute an immediate threat to public health.114
The new agro-industrial strategy of voluntarism rested on three pillars. The first pillar consisted of developing technical solutions to AMR. During the late 1990s and 2000s, farm and USDA journals discussed options ranging from AGP substitutes, disease-resistant animal breeds, vaccines, competitive inhibition, engineered antibodies, irradiated feeds and food, and bacteriophage therapies.115 Reacting to microbial vulnerabilities, concentrated livestock operations also enacted ever stricter biosecurity protocols. The last three decades have seen large integrated corporations remold indoor animal environments as well as the habitats and habits of surrounding human populations. In some areas of the United States, entire post-anthropocentric landscapes now center on maintaining the health of isolated animal monocultures.116
In addition to biosecurity and antibiotic substitution, the second and third pillars of industrial voluntarism consisted of stressing “rational” antibiotic use and using counter science. In 2002, FBNews noted: “There’s been a lot of clucking in recent years that livestock and poultry producers are using antibiotics willy nilly so they can crowd their animals together and farm on the cheap. The fact is antibiotics, like most drugs, aren’t cheap …. Farmers use [antibiotics] when they’re needed, and they should be able to continue doing so.”117 Similar to previous decades, lobbyists stressed the costs and limited benefits of statutory intervention. In 2008, a study in the Review of Agricultural Economics noted that AGP bans would marginally reduce feed efficacy but increase morbidity and mortality in pig husbandry and raise treatment costs in suboptimal rearing environments.118 Agricultural organizations used the study to oppose the Obama-era push for antibiotic restrictions (chapters 8 and 10). In 2009, FBNews warned that Danish AGP bans had resulted in greater mortality, morbidity, and antibiotic use for pigs. Significantly, the magazine also claimed that organic food had resolved the need for statutory intervention in the United States: “If, however, a consumer still does not trust food from animals treated with antibiotics, there’s already a way to avoid it. To be certified organic under USDA’s National Organic Program, animals can’t be given antibiotics …. if someone just wants to avoid products from animals that have been given antibiotics, they can already do that.”119 Farm Bureau president Bob Stallman even claimed that “the possibility of resistance from antibiotics in livestock is declining.”120
In the US farming press, commentators’ opinion on AMR became more ambivalent: while some continued to deny that agricultural antibiotic use was contributing to hazards, others endorsed cautious reform—but no statutory intervention. In 2001, Successful Farming had already reported on the hospitalization of a 12-year-old Nebraskan, whose resistant infection was linked to a salmonellosis outbreak and antibiotic use on his father’s cattle farm. The infection had been resistant to Rocephin (ceftriaxone) and was being used by the FDA to argue for a ban of Baytril in poultry production (chapter 10).121 In 2010, Farmers Weekly Review participated in the CDC’s antibiotic awareness week for human medicine but downplayed agricultural AMR hazards: “Antibiotics mean healthier livestock. Healthier livestock means higher quality food.”122
Wallaces Farmer also advocated “rational” antibiotic use but advised farmers to “keep telling our story”: “antibiotic resistance in bacteria is a natural part of the evolutionary process …. But we also know that underdosing, incomplete treatment or choosing the wrong antibiotic … can increase the rate of resistance.”123 Should farmers find themselves “defending an indefensible position,” then it was time to “take a serious look at abandoning that particular practice.”124 Responding to a reader, who feared that AGP bans might “erase my profit margin and force me out”125 in 2010, the magazine’s expert panel was surprisingly relaxed: two experts reminded the reader that therapeutic antibiotic use would remain legal, and the third expert noted that hogs were still “being produced profitably in European countries.”126
What US farmers themselves thought of AMR hazards is more difficult to say. A 2015 study by the USDA’s Economic Research Service indicates ongoing reliance on antibiotics for disease prevention but a gradual phasing out of AGPs, which were now estimated to raise productivity by only 1 to 3 percent. In the hog sector, the number of producers using AGPs to finish animals fell from 52 to 40 percent between 2004 and 2009. Although most producers used antibiotics for prophylaxis and treatment, ignorance about whether antibiotics were being fed to promote growth, however, rose from 7 to 22 percent—perhaps indicating the spread of integrated operations and diminished agency on the part of individual producers. Similar trends were apparent in nursery operations where 62 percent (5 percent ignorance) of producers were using antibiotics for disease prevention, 65 percent (5 percent ignorance) for disease prevention or growth promotion (5 percent ignorance), and only 33 percent (8 percent ignorance) solely for growth promotion. Overall use was lower in integrated operations. By 2009, 83 percent of American nursery hogs and 64 percent of finishing hogs were removed under contract.127 In the broiler sector, twenty large integrators accounted for 96 percent of US production in 2011. Already skeptical of growth promotion during the 1980s, about 48 percent of broiler operations reported only giving antibiotics to animals when they were sick (up from 33 percent in 2000 and 2 percent in 1995). However, 32 percent of surveyed operations also claimed that they did not know whether they used antibiotics for purposes other than disease treatment. Self-limiting antibiotic use was becoming more common due to rising demand for antibiotic-free poultry.128
Larger cattle producers defied trends in the pig and poultry sectors. In 1994 and 2011, more than three-quarters of American feedlots with at least 1,000 head (0.2 percent of producers, 8 percent of overall production in 2012) provided antibiotics in feed or water, mostly for the purpose of growth promotion. More than ninety percent of larger feedlots fed ionophores to promote growth, almost 75 percent added antibiotics other than ionophores and coccidiostats to feed, and 44.7 percent added a coccidiostat. AGPs proved less popular among smaller cattle producers. In 2011, only 28.7 percent of smaller feedlots used ionophores and only 26 percent used other antibiotics. Of cow-calf operations surveyed in 2007/2008, 15.8 percent reported feeding antibiotics to prevent disease and/or promote growth.129 In dairy farming, 90.1 percent of surveyed producers used antibiotics for disease prevention in 2007.130
Although USDA data reveals little about farmers’ personal risk perceptions, it indicates wider changes in the agricultural antibiotic market. During the first decade of the new millennium, many producers gradually phased out inefficient AGPs. Some also turned toward the antibiotic-free market. However, most producers still invested in routine prophylactic and therapeutic antibiotic use. With antimicrobial sales for food-producing animals increasing to over 14.859 tons in 2013,131 the majority of US farm animals were still receiving antibiotics at some point in their lives.
Most conventional farmers thus continued to support agro-industrial campaigning against Obama-era moves for statutory antibiotic restrictions—even if this entailed voluntarily abandoning AGPs. In April 2013, Wallaces Farmer reported that the AHI was pressing for compliance with formerly suspect FDA guidances to avert “what happened 10 years ago in the European Union, when the use of [AGPs] was stopped via regulation.”132 Although some commentators compared accepting voluntary antibiotic guidances to Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza,133 the AHI’s strategy of voluntarist reform seemed validated by the FDA’s abandonment of statutory restrictions in the same year (chapter 10).
Resulting voluntary restrictions’ impact on the physical and cultural antibiotic infrastructures on American farms seems to have been light. According to the Pew Charitable Trusts, FDA guidances allowed farmers to administer one-quarter of drugs at the same dosages and with no limits on treatment duration for the prevention and control of disease.134 Despite a recent decline of total antibiotic use and more radical reductions by large poultry producers like Perdue (chapter 10),135 open-ended prophylactic use of former AGPs continues to occur in cattle production.136 Voluntary bans have also failed to weaken organized agro-industrial resistance to statutory reform. During Iowa’s 2014 annual swine day, ex-USDA Undersecretary of Food Safety Richard Raymond asserted that knowledge about the causes of bacterial resistance remained in flux and that AMR could not be blamed on agricultural antibiotic use: “there is no proof that low doses are any more likely to cause resistance than high doses of antibiotics.”137 The Farm Bureau also maintains that “rational” antibiotic use is unproblematic. In a 2015 policy statement, it expressed “serious concerns about the effects of removing important antibiotics and classes of antibiotics from the market, which would handicap veterinarians and livestock and poultry producers in their efforts to maintain animal health and protect our nation’s food supply.”138 In December 2016, Scientific American highlighted significant efforts by the National Chicken Council and the AHI to topple new antibiotic-related legislation. Tasked with deciding over PAMTA’s final fate (chapter 8), half of the Health Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee had received donations of more than $15,000 by pharmaceutical companies or farming organizations. Larger corporations are also being accused of using biosecurity protocols and fines to keep critical researchers and journalists away from production facilities.139
Over the past decades, this dual strategy of resisting statutory reform and stressing voluntarist measures has been remarkably successful in defending US agricultural antibiotic use. Since the 1970s, pharma-led agricultural lobbying defeated multiple statutory interventions and even expanded drug access during the 1990s. Part of this success has rested on compartmentalizing antibiotic problems: beginning with the 1972 task force report, agro-industrial commentators dismissed AMR concerns by claiming that popular products like AGPs remained efficacious, confusing AMR and residue issues, blaming AMR on medical overuse, and focusing on individual aspects rather than wider structures of drug use. Compartmentalization made problems seem reformable via new drugs, antibiotic substitutes, market niches for pure food, improved biosecurity, and narrow restrictions—as in the case of AGPs. It also helped maintain inner-agricultural cohesion and unified opposition against excessive state intervention. Despite internal doubts about AGP efficacy and varying consumption patterns, the US agricultural alliance for broad antibiotic access has remained firm. While voluntary restrictions and antibiotic-free product lines have undeniably reduced total antibiotic use since 2013, control over the shape of future reforms seems to rest in the hands of industry—and not of the officials tasked with regulating it.
From the historical perspective, it is debatable whether further victories over state intervention are in US farmers’ best interest. Helping the pharmaceutical industry ward off FDA action has committed organizations like the Farm Bureau to an ideological rear-guard defense of antibiotic use that will continue to face external criticism. Weaker US regulations may also give a long-term advantage to European producers, who have already adapted to production without AGPs and are now preparing for likely restrictions of prophylactic drug use. In the long term, stricter statutory regulations may aid European markets by allowing producers to sell “safer” produce and argue for barriers against American food produced with less stringent standards (chapter 12). Economically, polarized antibiotic battles are moreover contributing to a situation in which American farmers’ representatives defend a system of industrial production that is consistently pushing independent producers into industry contracts or out of farming altogether. Since antibiotics’ mass introduction to agriculture, the number of US farms has declined by over 60 percent from 5,388,437 in 1950 to 2,109,303 in 2012.140 Although antibiotics did not cause intensification, they facilitated the rise of a new mode of integrated food production, which is unlikely to increase—or even sustain—existing farmer numbers. Arguing for state support to protect the antibiotic commons via alternative production methods might. At several moments in history, an open agricultural debate on antibiotics’ long-term costs and benefits could have stimulated a wider revaluation of expansion and intensification’s ambivalent impact on farmers themselves.
