Modern agriculture deserves praise for the good it does. Food is plentiful, relatively cheap and easy to acquire. Instead of having to struggle with raising crops and livestock or hunting and gathering, many Americans can go to the grocery store and get the food we need to stay alive. However, as with all things, there is a price.
The modern agricultural complex is highly centralized and industrialized, which has advantages and disadvantages. There are also the harms of practices aimed at maximizing profits. While there are many ways to maximize profits, two common ones are to pay the lowest wages possible and to shift costs to others. I will look, briefly, at one area of cost shifting: the widespread use of antibiotics in meat production.
While most think of antibiotics as a means of treating diseases, healthy food animals are routinely given antibiotics. One reason is to prevent infections: factory farming techniques, as might be imagined, vastly increase the chances of a disease spreading. Antibiotics, it is claimed, can help reduce the risk of bacterial infections (antibiotics are useless against viruses). A second reason is that antibiotics increase the growth rate of healthy animals, allowing them to pack on more meat in less time and time is money. These uses allow the industry to continue factory farming and maintain high productivity, which initially seems laudable. The problem is, however, the use of antibiotics comes with a high price that is paid for by everyone else.
Eric Schlosser wrote “A Safer Food Future, Now”, which appeared in the May 2016 issue of Consumer Reports. In this article, he noted that this practice has contributed significantly to the rise of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Each year, about two million Americans are infected with resistant strains and about 20,000 people die. The healthcare cost is about $20 billion. To be fair, the agricultural industry is not the only contributor to this problem: improper use of antibiotics in humans has also added to this problem. That said, the agricultural use of antibiotics accounts for about 75% of all antibiotic usage in the United States, thus converting the factory farms into farms for resistant bacteria.
The harmful consequences of this antibiotic use have been known for years and there have been attempts to address this through legislation. It is no surprise that our elected leaders have failed to act. One likely explanation is the lobbying power of corporations. In the United States, both parties prioritize profits over the people. But it could be contended that lawmakers are ignorant of the harms, doubt there are harms from antibiotics or honestly believe that the harms arising are outweighed by the benefits. That is, the lawmakers have credible reasons other than the money they are paid to do the will of the wealthy. This is a factual matter, but no professional politician who has been swayed by lobbying will attribute her decision to anything other than good intentions.
This matter is one of ethical concern and, like most large-scale ethical matters involving competing interests, is one best approached by utilitarian considerations. On the side of using antibiotics, there is the increased productivity (and profits) of the factory farming system. This allows more and cheaper food to be provided for the population, which can be regarded as pluses. The main reasons to not use the antibiotics, as noted above, are that they contribute to the creation of antibiotic-resistant strains that sicken and kill people. This imposes costs on those who are sickened and killed as well as those who care about them. There are also the monetary costs in the health care system (although the increased revenue can be tagged as a plus for health care providers). In addition to these costs, there are also other social and economic costs, such as lost hours of work. As this indicates, the cost (illness, death, etc.) of the use of the antibiotics is shifted: the industry does not pay these costs, they are paid by everyone else. Including other industries.
Using a utilitarian calculation requires weighing the cost to the general population against the profits of the industry and the claimed benefits to the general population. Put roughly, the moral question is whether the improved profits and greater food production outweigh the illness, deaths and costs suffered by the public. Most politicians seem to believe that the answer is “yes.”
If the United States were in a food crisis in which the absence of the increased productivity afforded by antibiotics would cause more suffering and death than their presence, then their use would be morally acceptable. However, this does not seem to be the case. While banning this sort of antibiotic use would decrease productivity (and impact profits), the harm of doing this would seem to be vastly exceeded by the reduction in illness, deaths and health care costs. However, if an objective assessment of the matter showed that the ban on antibiotics would not create more benefits than harm, then it would be reasonable and morally acceptable to continue to use them. This is partially a matter of value (in terms of how the harms and benefits are weighted) and partially an objective matter (in terms of monetary and health costs). I am inclined to agree that the general harm of using the antibiotics exceeds the general benefits, but I could be convinced otherwise by objective data.