How Superbugs Hitch a Ride From Hog Farms Into Your Community

If you walk this line, you might just get MRSA in your nose. <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/farmsanctuary1/2163457736/sizes/m/in/photolist-4ibhBs-5Wg9ej-5WiDKY-aUWp9g-5WcCqk-5WfvDy-5tLYcj-5Wfok5-5Wfojb-5hcfyT-8zHeGQ-4icoQC-4ib5tC-4icqUQ-4i6WJB-4i8bGr-5n6kJB-5n6npD-5n6m8B-5n6mfp-5n6mok-5n6p6P-5n6mje-5n6p1M-5n6oQD-5n6pmi-5n6oCr-5n6pte-MCcRH-5naDts-5naDm9-5n6o4Z-5naB2q-5naDJE-5naEtG-5n6nZB-5QYCKt-4i7m3a-4i6SCP-4icqiL-4i6D8x-4i8A4g-4ibgzQ-4iaFgG-4oNNdf-4icbnf-5n6nkv-5n6ngB-5n6kND-5n6kYF-4icbBh/">Farm Sanctuary</a>/Flickr

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Factory-scale farms don’t just house hundreds of genetically similar animals in tight quarters over vast cesspools collecting their waste. They also house a variety of bacteria that live within those unfortunate beasts’ guts. And when you dose the animals daily with small amounts of antibiotics—a common practice—the bacteria strains in these vast germ reservoirs quite naturally develop the ability to withstand anti-bacterial treatments.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria leave these facilities in two main ways. The obvious one is meat: As Food and Drug Administration data shows, the pork chops, chicken parts, and ground beef you find on supermarket shelves routinely carry resistant bacteria strains. But there’s another, more subtle way: through the people who work on these operations.

In a new paper, a team of researchers from Johns Hopkins and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill took nasal swabs from 22 North Carolina hog facility workers over 14 days. The results: 10 of them proved to be “persistent” carriers of a strain of bacteria associated with livestock called Staphylococcus aureus—that is, they carried for up to four days after their last day at work. Of those 10, 7 of the workers carried a form of Staphylococcus aureus that’s resistant to one or more antibiotics.

The researchers report that their study is the first to test the persistence of the bacteria strains that workers pick up at livestock farms. “Researchers had believed that livestock-associated bacteria would clear from the noses of hog workers quickly—within 24 hours,” the press release accompanying the report states. Apparently, not so much.

If the sample size sounds small, it is. Most hog production in North Carolina takes place within facilities owned or operated by large meat-processing companies, and they aren’t eager to cooperate with independent researchers. Finding workers to participate is tricky. “This study would not have been possible without a strong partnership between researchers and community-based organisations that have the trust of members of communities in areas where the density of industrial hog production is high,” the authors state.

The study comes on the heels of another one, published on PLOS One in 2013, which compared nasal swabs from workers on industrial-scale hog farms with those of workers on antibiotic-free operations. Six of 34 industrial-farm workers carried multidrug-resistant forms of livestock-associated staph, compared to none of the antibiotic-free farmworkers.

While these and other studies suggest that farmworkers are moving resistant bacteria from farms and into the world, potentially infecting others, they don’t prove that MRSA and other potentially deadly staph strains are spreading from this source. You can carry a staph germ in your nose without becoming infected with it. The authors say they’re now studying whether the workers, their families, and their surrounding communities are more prone to infections.

Meanwhile, a University of Iowa study earlier this year found that people who live within a mile of a hog operation are nearly three times more likely to carry MRSA in their noses than the general population. A 2013 Johns Hopkins study that looked at actual MRSA infections in Pennsylvania found that people who live near fields treated with industrially farmed hog manure are “significantly” more likely to be treated for infections, and that people who live near hog operations showed a “similar but weaker association” with MRSA infection rates.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate