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Britain’s waterways have never been in a sadder state. Many of them have been dredged, leveled or concreted. Those that remain are subject to unsustainable removals or are routinely used as sewage overflow pipes by for-profit corporations with little legal pressure for reform, and across the country rivers and streams are flooded with agricultural waste as it drains from farmland. Pesticides and fertilizers run off the fields have devastating effects on the flora and fauna in these vital, fragile ecosystems – poisoning fish and insects, causing massive algal blooms that suck oxygen from the water and, in times of drought, turn rivers in highly concentrated chemical cocktails in which nothing can live. Researchers have now provided worrying new details about the “widespread impact” farm waste is having on our waterways, with rivers around the UK’s factory farms inundated with antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The report, which is the first of its kind in the UK, identified superbugs in rivers and waterways in areas with high levels of factory farming. Two common bacteria that can cause infection and disease in humans and animals are E. coli and S. aureus. Antibiotic-resistant strains of both were found in rivers adjacent to pig and chicken farms, as well as in slurry runoff from intensive dairy farms. The investigation by World Animal Protection, the Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism prompted “urgent calls for the UK government to ban the routine use of antibiotics in healthy farm animals”, the organizations said. Samples were collected in areas around the UK with high farming levels, including Sussex, Norfolk and the Wye Valley, the latter of which has made headlines recently for its massive level of pollution from chicken farms causing high levels of nitrates and phosphorus and creates ecological dead zones. The research team said an estimated 80 per cent of all farmed animals in the UK live on factory farms. “The squalid, harsh and cramped conditions of these farms necessitate the widespread preventive use of antibiotics – without which these animals would not survive.” They warned that superbugs from factory farms flowing into rivers can then reach people in many ways, for example, in drinking water, during swimming and recreational activities or eating fish from polluted waters. “Unless the government takes action, the UK faces a human health crisis where diseases can no longer be treated due to antibiotic resistance,” they said. Lindsay Duncan, breeding campaigns manager at World Animal Protection, said: “Our report shows that our rivers are inundated with superbugs. “The World Health Organization has estimated that antibiotic resistance will be the leading cause of death worldwide by 2050, with a total economic cost of £66 trillion – this is a crisis for human health. “We are calling on the UK Government to act now, raise welfare standards, prevent suffering and ban the routine prophylactic use of antibiotics in farm animals.” He added: “If farm animal welfare were improved, there would be no need for this dangerous and unnecessary use of antibiotics which is such a threat to human health.” Cóilín Nuna, scientific adviser to the Soil Association and the Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics, said more than a million people a year are being killed worldwide due to rising levels of antibiotic resistance and highlighted how resistant bacteria are adding to the environment. the problem. He said: “Most antibiotics taken by humans or animals are excreted, along with antibiotic-resistant bacteria. When manure or slurry is spread on land, it increases the number of resistant bacteria in soil and water, and these can end up on crops. The best way to reduce the impact of agriculture is to make big cuts in antibiotic use, and that means keeping animals in healthier conditions so they rarely need medication.” Dr Shireen Kassam, consultant haematologist and founder of Plant-Based Health Professionals UK, said: “As a hospital consultant, my patients are already directly affected by the consequences of the widespread use of antibiotics in agriculture. Antibiotic-resistant infections are common and global data has confirmed that no country is spared from the dire consequences of these infections, with increasing rates of death directly caused by these resistant infections. “There is no doubt that to substantially reduce the health-related burden of antibiotic-resistant infections, we must drastically reduce animal feed production and consumption, with a particular focus on eliminating intensive farming practices that require excessive antibiotic use. »
