That said, fire blight resistance to streptomycin is a concern for growers - it's now pretty common in orchards in the Pacific Northwest. Any residue on fruit, she says, is minuscule. Research suggests both of the antibiotics used on fruit crops are rendered inactive in soils, she says, minimizing concerns that residues that drift to the ground after spraying would be a problem. Robert Burns/Texas AgriLife Extension Service/via Flickr Pears are particularly susceptible to the disease. "There have never been any cases where we've been able to link an antibiotic-resistant pathogen in humans to orchards," says Stockwell, who recently conducted a review of the literature on the subject for the National Organic Standards Board.įire blight symptoms on pear leaves. Not every orchard gets sprayed every year. That's including all organic and conventionally grown fruit. In the U.S., up to 16 percent of all apple acreage and up to 40 percent of all pear acreage get sprayed with antibiotics each year, she says, citing data from NASS. By comparison, 36,000 pounds of antibiotics were sprayed on fruit trees - mostly on pears and apples, according to data she compiled from the USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service. Put another way, about 30 million pounds of antibiotics were used in livestock in 2011. The problem of drug resistance has led to widespread calls for reining in the use of antibiotics on farms, in order to preserve the medicines' effectiveness in treating human disease.īut antibiotic use in plant agriculture is far more limited - just a little over one-tenth of 1 percent of total agricultural use, according to Virginia Stockwell, a plant pathologist at Oregon State University who studies fire blight management. And resistance can jump from bacteria that infect livestock to microbes that sicken people. That heavy usage has been widely blamed for promoting the spread of antibiotic-resistant bugs. go to livestock - not just to treat disease and prevent infections, but also, primarily, to help animals put on more weight. About 80 percent of all antibiotics used in the U.S. Consumers Union, the policy arm of Consumer Reports, is among the groups who say the answer should be a resounding no.Īntibiotics have been used in American plant and livestock agriculture since the mid-20th century. This week, the National Organic Standards Board is meeting in Portland, Ore., to decide on a petition from organic growers to extend that exemption. The notion behind the exemption for these two fruit crops was that, in between reviews, growers would devise effective non-antibiotic-based methods for controlling fire blight.īut the antibiotic exemption is set to expire in October 2014. Items on that list are revisited on a periodic basis. Department of Agriculture's national organic labeling standards went into effect in 2002, the two antibiotics were listed as synthetic materials approved for use in organic apple and pear production. "Organic is supposed to be consistent in meaning," she tells The Salt. "This isn't what consumers expect out of organics," says Urvashi Rangan, the director of consumer safety and sustainability at Consumer Reports. It's such a big threat that for decades, growers have seen two antibiotics, streptomycin and oxytetracycline, as vital weapons in the fight to control the disease - even on organic apples and pears.īut their use has raised questions about transparency in organic labeling, amid concerns about the overuse of antibiotics in food production. It's hard to stop" once it takes hold, says Ken Johnson, a plant pathologist at Oregon State University. "It's basically like a gangrene of your limbs. To be clear, it's the apple and pear tree blossoms that get sprayed with antibiotics, not the fruit itself.Īpples and especially pears are vulnerable to a nasty bacterial infection called fire blight that, left unchecked, can spread quickly, killing fruit trees and sometimes devastating whole orchards. Note: We've updated the headline on this post for the sake of clarity. Organic apples hang from trees in an orchard in Forest Range, Adelaide Hills, South Australia.
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