Scientific evidence demonstrating the harms associated with chemical-based agriculture and attendant confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) have stacked up fast and furiously over the past several weeks and months.

Four components of our current food system causing a wide array of health and environmental problems are genetically engineered (GE) crops, pesticides, CAFOs, and the routine use of antibiotics in livestock.

This includes problems like antibiotic-resistant disease, weed and pest resistance, water shortages, environmental pollution, and toxic exposure through foods that threaten your health from the ingredient glyphosate, the main ingredient in Roundup.

Here, I’ll review some of the latest research pertaining to these issues, and how GE crops, herbicides, CAFOs, and antibiotics are synergistically exacerbating the problems created by each individually.  

Most corn and soy grown in the US is genetically engineered (GE). According to US Department of Agriculture (USDA) data,¹ 94 percent of soybeans cultivated in 2014 were GE herbicide-tolerant, along with 89 percent of corn.

These GE crops end up in your diet both via processed foods—in the form of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and trans fat vegetable oils—and via CAFO beef and other animal products, as the majority of GE grains are actually fed to factory farmed livestock.

Groundbreaking Research Reveals Herbicides Promote Antibiotic Resistance

As it turns out, the use of antibiotics in agriculture is not the only way our food system promotes antibiotic-resistance—a trend that now threatens to revert our medical system back into the pre-antibiotic era when you could die from a common infection.

In the first study²,³ of its kind in the world, researchers found that commonly used herbicides also promote antibiotic resistance by priming pathogens to more readily become resistant to antibiotics.

This includes Roundup (the actual formulation of Roundup, not just glyphosate in isolation), which was shown to increase the antibiotic-resistant prowess of E. coli and salmonella. As reported by Rodale News:⁴

“The way Roundup causes this effect is likely by causing the bacteria to turn on a set of genes that are normally off, [study author] Heinemann says. ‘These genes are for ‘pumps’ or ‘porins,’ proteins that pump out toxic compounds or reduce the rate at which they get inside of the bacteria…

Once these genes are turned on by the herbicide, then the bacteria can also resist antibiotics. If bacteria were to encounter only the antibiotic, they would instead have been killed.

In a sense, the herbicide is ‘immunizing’ the bacteria to the antibiotic:…This change occurs at levels commonly used on farm field crops, lawns, gardens, and parks.’” [Emphasis mine]

Other herbicides scrutinized in the study include dicamba and 2,4-D, which is particularly relevant in light of the recent approval of a new generation of GE crops resistant not only to glyphosate, but also to dicamba and/or  2,4-D (an ingredient in the devastating defoliant Agent Orange).  

This important research implies that combating the weed and pest resistance caused by Roundup Ready GE crops by introducing dicamba- and 2,4-D-resistant varieties is probably only going to speed up the process of creating multi-drug resistant pathogens.

And, since GE grains are fed to CAFO animals, the entire food supply is a massive source of potentially lethal multi-drug-resistant pathogens. The study,⁵ published in the peer-reviewed journal mBio on March 24, concluded that:

“Increasingly common chemicals used in agriculture, domestic gardens, and public places can induce a multiple-antibiotic resistance phenotype in potential pathogens. The effect occurs upon simultaneous exposure to antibiotics and is faster than the lethal effect of antibiotics.

The magnitude of the induced response may undermine antibiotic therapy and substantially increase the probability of spontaneous mutation to higher levels of resistance.

The combination of high use of both herbicides and antibiotics in proximity to farm animals and important insects, such as honeybees, might also compromise their therapeutic effects and drive greater use of antibiotics.

To address the crisis of antibiotic resistance requires broadening our view of environmental contributors to the evolution of resistance.”