WAP, Alliance to save our antibiotics and The BIJ, 2022
https://www.saveourantibiotics.org/media/2051/superbugs-in-the-environment-v3.pdf
Testing commissioned by World Animal Protection, the Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics and the Bureau of
Investigative Journalism has found bacteria resistant to the highest-priority critically important antibiotics in rivers and waterways in areas with high numbers of factory farms.
Antibiotic-resistant E. coli and S. aureus were found in rivers adjacent to both factory farms and higher-welfare outdoor farms, as well as in slurry run off from intensive dairy farms. E. coli and S. aureus are the two pathogens causing the most deaths worldwide that are associated with antibiotic resistance. Separate testing for a specific gene which makes bacteria resistant to certain antibiotics found more of these genes downstream of intensive farms than upstream.
The tests found antibiotic-resistant strains of E coli and Staphylococcus aureus, which can cause serious infections in humans, among other superbugs. Some of the samples showed resistance to antibiotics that are classified as “highest-priority critically important for human medicine”.
Obtained samples of water and sediment from waterways near twelve poultry and pig farms, including in the Wye Valley and Norfolk. Waste at four cattle units in Sussex, including dairy and beef farms, and one sample from poultry litter (a mixture of droppings and soiled straw) in Sussex, were also tested.
All of the cattle farms, and eight of the poultry and pig farms, were intensive, with some or all animals permanently kept indoors. Four were free range.
The river samples were collected both upstream and downstream of the pig and poultry farms to assess differences in resistant bacteria, genes – regarded as the building blocks of antibiotic resistance – and residue levels. Cattle farm samples were obtained directly from slurry, which in one case was leaking from a waste lagoon, polluting a footpath and nearby fields.
Analysis by scientists at the Fera laboratory in York revealed resistance to antibiotics known as sulfonamides, which are classified as highly important in human medicine, was more consistently found downstream than upstream of factory pig and chicken farms. This suggests resistance is entering the environment from these farms.
In southwest England, testing of waste from more than fifty dairy units found infection with drug resistant disease, including on footpaths polluted with slurry, which has the potential for onward contamination.