Those eating plant-based have a reduced load of antibiotic resistance genes in their gut.
There are nearly one million Salmonella and Campylobacter infections in children 10 years and younger each year in the United States alone. Some of these infections are severe, causing meningitis and death, and requiring treatment with antibiotics. However, there’s an increasing problem of antibiotic resistance among these bugs that threatens our ability to treat them. Part of the issue is that the same life-saving, miracle-drug antibiotics are being squandered in animals raised for food for things like growth promotion in unhygienic, crowded conditions, which increases the likelihood that pathogens like Salmonella or Campylobacter will become resistant. (I’ve done a bunch of videos on this.) There’s another problem. The resistance determinants, the genes that encode antibiotic resistance, may be transmitted from farm animals to humans through the food supply. Most antibiotic-resistant bacteria have mobile genetic elements—these little circles of DNA called plasmids—that carry the resistance genes that they can pass on to other bacteria, including those in our own gut.
Farm animals are, therefore, “a reservoir of antibiotic resistance genes and a potential vector for transmission” of these resistance genes to the human intestinal microbiota. In one study, researchers used a model that mimics the human intestines to assess the transfer of an antibiotic-resistance plasmid from E. coli originating from a chicken raised for meat to bacteria in the human gut. And it happened within two hours. This spread of antibiotic-resistance genes presents “an alarming scenario,” “a growing concern that antibiotic resistant bacteria present on food can transfer their resistance genes to the inherent gut microbiota of the consumer,” as you can see here and at 1:51 in my video Antibiotic Resistance Genes in the Guts of Vegetarians vs. Meat-Eaters.
But you don’t know until you put it to the test. Researchers compared antibiotic-resistance gene loads in the gut bacteria of vegans, vegetarians, and omnivores. You’d think the results might be obvious, but antibiotic-resistance genes are spread by applying manure to agricultural fields of fruits and vegetables. Yes, massive antibiotic use in animal farming is thought to be the greatest contributor to antibiotic-resistant bacteria in foods of animal origin, such as meat, eggs, and dairy. However, sewage from treated animals may impact vegetables grown on fertilized fields, but it was largely unknown whether, and to what extent, antibiotic-resistant bacteria are being transferred to vegetables and then to the human gut. That is, until researchers looked for antibiotic-resistant genes against sulfa drugs like Bactrim, tetracyclines, penicillins and cephalosporins, and streptomycin-type antibiotics. They found both omnivores and vegetarians showed a significantly higher antibiotic-resistant gene load in their guts compared to vegans.
There wasn’t a significant difference between omnivores and vegetarians, but vegans had significantly lower loads than both omnivores and vegetarians—“the first evidence that a vegan life style is associated with a reduced load of human gut [antibiotic-resistant genes],” but not the last. There were fewer tetracycline-resistance genes in vegan guts and more vancomycin-resistance genes in the guts of those who eat meat. That’s no surprise, since they found a correlation between tetracycline-resistance genes and the intake of eggs, milk, and cheese, and a higher incidence of vancomycin-resistance genes was found in those who ate eggs, poultry, fish, and seafood. Vancomycin is one of our antibiotics of last resort, used to treat serious life-threatening strep and staph infections like MRSA.
Despite the links to dairy and eggs, just cutting out meat has indeed been shown to offer an advantage in some studies, as bacteria obtained from meat-eater stool samples showed resistance to a greater number of antibiotics and carried more tested antibiotic-resistance genes compared to vegan or vegetarian stool samples.
Doctor’s Note
The combined lobbying might of Big Ag and Big Pharma has prevented the United States from following the recommendations of nearly every major medical and public health entity to restrict the use of life-saving drugs to prop up agribusiness. Shame on the animal agriculture and pharmaceutical industries. More on this unacceptable practice in:
