A good article by Philip Brasher on antibiotics in ethanol production ran in the Des Moines Register. He notes that
Ethanol producers have long used antibiotics to control bacteria that can contaminate the fermentation process.
Like the pervasive use of antibiotics in animal agriculture, this broad use is not such a good thing:
- Pencillan and viriginiamycin are used by many ethanol plants to prevent bacteria from contaminating fermentation tanks. However, this is also a pathway for building drug-resistant bacteria -- especially when dried distillers grains from the process are sold as cattle feed, and those cattle then enter the human food chain.
- These two antibiotics are similar to drugs humans rely on to fight infectious disease.
- Previous testing by FDA found antibiotics in more than half of the samples tested.
Some background on the issue of antibiotic resistence through the use in animals can be found here. Replies by Dr. Tamar Barlam, as well as the Brasher article, note that there are generally readily available substitutes to the antibiotics currently being used. These include other types of agents and better management of the production process and associated sanitation. The challenge is that these alternatives may cost more, or require a higher level of worker training. However, ignoring these issues and simply allowing ethanol producers to erode our commons of antibiotic resistance in return for a slightly lower production cost is a short-sighted subsidy indeed.
Ag-system analyst and author Michael Pollen put it this way back in 2003:
Once-useful antibiotics are losing their power because we've squandered them, essentially, on animal agriculture. From an ecological point of view or biological point of view, it's absolute insanity. From an economic point of view, it's perfectly rational. Here's the cheap source of calories. We've got too many of them. Let's feed it to the cows.
