A new legal petition filed by a dozen public health and agricultural activist groups calls on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to stop allowing farms in the US to spray antibiotics on food crops because they are potentially causing superbugs to thrive and sicken farm workers.
The agriculture industry sprays approximately 8 million pounds of antibiotic and antifungal pesticides on U.S. food crops each year, many of which are banned in other countries.
Excessive use of antibiotics, which are necessary to treat human disease, is a public health threat in the form of pesticides on fruits and vegetables because it can create superbug bacteria that are antibiotic resistant. Similarly, excessive use of antifungal pesticides can lead to fungal infections that are less treatable with currently available medical drugs, the groups say.
“Every year Americans are at greater risk from dangerous bacteria and diseases because of human pesticides sprayed on crops,” said Nathan Donnelly, director of environmental health sciences at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This kind of negligence and preventable suffering occurs when industry has control over the EPA’s pesticide-approval process.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that antibiotic-resistant infections sicken about 2.8 million people and cause about 35,000 deaths annually. The CDC has linked “medically important antibiotics” that the EPA has linked to the use of pesticides on crops to antibiotic resistance in bacteria, increased risk of staph infections, and increased risk of MRSA.
Documents obtained by the Center for Biological Diversity through a Freedom of Information Act request show that a 2017 CDC study raised concerns about the risks in expanding the use of antibiotics on citrus crops.
“The use of antibiotics as pesticides has the potential to select for antimicrobial-resistant bacteria present in the environment,” the agency wrote.
Meanwhile, consumption of antibiotic residues in food can also disrupt the human gut microbiome and increase the risk of chronic diseases. These substances also pollute drinking water supplies and are believed to harm pollinators. Low-income and Latino farm workers are often most at risk.
Farms spray antibiotics because they kill bacteria that can damage or kill crops.
Among the most common antibiotic pesticides is streptomycin, which is commonly used in medical care. The US Geological Survey estimates that up to 125,000 pounds have been sprayed on US crops in a year.
Donnelly said the petition comes as the EPA faces pressure to expand the use of human antibiotics. Bacterial citrus greening disease, transmitted by the Asian citrus psyllid, is devastating citrus orchards in Florida.
Donnelly acknowledged that the citrus industry was facing an “incredibly scary” situation, but said that dumping more medically important antibiotics on crops would be a major disaster in the long run.
Donnelly said, “I understand their frustration because they are badly misguided, but from a societal perspective this is absolutely a no-brainer – it can’t be happening.” “The point is that the enormous problems posed by human drug spraying on food crops are far greater than agricultural problems.”
Donnelly said there are some simple crop management steps that should be tried first, such as spacing crops apart, breeding more disease-resistant varieties of crops and identifying diseased trees and removing them immediately to prevent diseases from spreading.
The petition gives the EPA approximately five years to respond. Several years earlier, the agency had banned chlorpyrifos in response to a similar legal petition, but a judge overturned the EPA’s ban.
The agency may impose restrictions, or it must provide reasons for not doing so. Donnelly said the EPA was unlikely to take action under the Trump administration. If this, or a future administration, does not take action, the groups could sue. This process may take more than a decade.
“We’re playing the long game,” Donnelly said.
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