Fish Farming and Antibiotic Resistance

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In this episode, Thomas Van Boeckel tells us about how aquaculture might be helping drive the rise of drug-resistant superbugs around the world.

Three-quarters of antibiotics sold globally go to farmed animals. Some of these animals are fish and shrimp.

Thomas Van Boeckel studies the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and other drug-resistant microbes at the Department of Environmental Systems Science at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology-- known as ETH Zurich. He’s also a visiting fellow at the One Health Trust.

People need to pay attention to the use of antibiotics in aquaculture, he says. No one’s even measuring it right now, he tells host Maggie Fox.  And the problem in aquaculture is similar to the problem in intensive farming everywhere. Farmers use antibiotics as insurance. “There are so many fish packed in such a small space that there would be a big loss for the fish farmer is he or she loses production so the use is mostly preventive,” he says. “If you have conditions where animals are packed all together—look at this from the perspective of a pathogen.”