 Our next speaker is Chloe Louyette. She is a native Michigander. She is working on her PhD in chemical engineering. And her speech is how antibiotics have failed us the food industry's role in a global epidemic, not academic, epidemic. Please welcome Chloe. My grandpa always says, everything in a moderation. He says it just like that. Everything in moderation, he says, as he crams more butter into the pores of his English muffin at breakfast. He may be a hypocrite, but he is right. Too much of anything is never good, like the sun or wasabi. Or, if we're being honest, you're in loss. Bacteria are causing big problems for such small microorganisms. And they're everywhere. Antibiotic resistant bacteria, for which there is no cure, render modern antibiotics futile. The solution lies within regulating how antibiotics are used today. Although they've saved many lives, antibiotics must be used responsibly. So just like the sun, wasabi, and you're in loss, antibiotics are good in moderation. The issue is that the excessive misuse and overuse of antibiotics has led bacteria to develop a resistance, and the food industry is a primary culprit. I'm not going to lie to you. Circumstances are dire. In 2017, antibiotic resistant infections killed 700,000 people worldwide. That's like everyone in Ann Arbor in Detroit right now dying. Just gone. 700,000 people. To put that further into perspective, that's two times the number of people who died from recreational drug and alcohol abuse combined, and lives lost are only increasing. I can't remember what motivated my fascination with food health. Perhaps it was my parents always telling me, hard work leads to good things, and so I thought fast food was too easy? All I know is that everyone else in my family ate fast food, and the day that I finally convinced my mom to stop eating fast food, she had just ordered a filet-of-fish takeout from McDonald's. She looked at me, head tilted down from the driver's seat like she had imaginary glasses on her nose, and I gave her the judgmental disgusted look she was all too familiar with. What, she said, it's just fish. That's got to be healthy. And I said, but it's square. What fish is square? I am going to convince you to take your health seriously, too, especially and specifically when it comes to antibiotics. Now, the antibiotics I'm talking about, are drugs or medicines used to stop bacterial infections, and they usually work in one of two ways. Either they directly kill the bacterial cells, or they impede the bacterial cells from reproducing. Antibiotics have been used in the food industry since the 1940s. They've been used as pesticides for animal growth promotion, for disease control, and disease prevention. And since the 1940s, bacteria have been developing a resistance to antibiotics. Now, how bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics is very much like how I innovatively fashioned this duct tape cushion around the corner shelf of my work desk after repeatedly banging my head when I bend down. Go ahead, you can laugh at my expense. I will inevitably hit my head again, but at least now it won't hurt me. Bacterial resistance is a little more sophisticated than that, but the same way that I solved my problem after hurting myself several times, bacteria learn to mitigate the harmful effects that antibiotics have on them. By evolving faster, the more frequently they are exposed. 76% of the antibiotics sold in the United States are used to raise meat and poultry. We use more antibiotics in animal husbandry than some countries even have access to. If that's not overuse and misuse of antibiotics, I don't know what is. Antibiotic-resistant infections is a problem that is less than a century old, yet it could cause the demise of the world as we know it, and I'm not the only one who thinks so. In 1970, the Food and Drug Administration attempted to revoke the food industry's privileges to use antibiotics. However, despite the alarming evidence to do so, political opposition squashed the proposal. It then wasn't until 2009 that the FDA even decided to start monitoring the quantity of antibiotics used in the animal food industry. In 2012 and 2013, the FDA published the Guidances 209 and 213, in which they finally, after 40 years since their first attempt, tried to take some initiative. This is an excerpt from one of those guidances in which it explicitly states that the contents of the document are not legally enforced. And it even goes so far as to write this at the top of each page. Contains non-binding recommendations. Recommendations! Without repercussions, there's nothing to even comply to. Could you imagine recommending that a five-year-old not to eat too much candy before dinner? That five-year-old would just look at you and say, but I don't have to listen to you. You said recommend! Apparently, our health isn't valuable enough, so it rides on the integrity of big food and pharmaceutical industries. And digging deeper into the guidances doesn't provide any more consolation. Guidance 209 recommends that farmers use antibiotics judiciously, which essentially means that acceptable and sensible quantities of antibiotics are at the discretion of, yet again, big food and pharma. They're suggesting that companies use antibiotics in amounts they think are sensible. And I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure that's what they were doing before the guidances were written. We cannot leave it up to their discretion. The same reason why we wouldn't let a five-year-old decide how many marshmallows they get to eat, speaking of which, this is what my five and six-year-old cousins had to say. What is it? OK, guys, you just finished dinner. How many marshmallows do you think you should have? Wow! Oh, my goodness. And that's how they behave without the sugar. The point here being is that we know marshmallows can't replace a nourishing and sustainable diet the same way that we know antibiotics don't belong in our food. And not to say that farmers and companies are children, but we need to provide more direction in order to not only encourage, but to teach best practices in the first place. Now please, please, please don't check out of my talk now and say, this doesn't apply to me. Everyone is susceptible no matter what we eat. And to prove that to you, I'll tell a little story. Antibiotics are given to animals being raised for food. And those animals have all kinds of bacteria inside them. The antibiotics will kill the good bacteria, but over time, some of those bacteria will develop a resistance. And with the good bacteria gone, those animals are now a nursery for the antibiotic resistant bacteria to multiply and thrive. Raise your hand if you eat meat. You are susceptible. Those animals excrete bacteria and antibiotics into the soil. And antibiotics are even sprayed in the water's housing farm raised fish. Raise your hand if you eat fish. You are susceptible. That contaminated water is used to grow crops. And antibiotics are even sprayed as a pesticide as well. Raise your hand if you eat your fruits and vegetables. You are susceptible. Sorry, vegetarians and vegans. You're not immune. I think by now I'm not presumptuous to say we are all susceptible. Resistance Staphylococcus aureus alone kills more people each year in the US than HIV AIDS, Parkinson's disease, emphysema, and homicide combined. We are vulnerable. We're at the mercy of bacteria and we're far outnumbered. The food industry has trained them by overexposing them to antibiotics. Our health has been compromised by the food industry. And now that you know this, there is something that you can do. If you can't rely on the organizations that have been put in place to protect you and you can't trust the food industry, an industry which, by the way, should be one of the most transparent because it impacts your health, you can take matters into your own hands. You alone are responsible for what you put in your body and you can be a steward of your own health. As well-informed stewards of our own diets, we should be aware that the food industry has mastered the art of deception. The first time I walked into Kroger and decided to purchase Simple Truth Meat Brand, I thought I was making a safe, smart, healthy decision. After all, the company boasts about its health, so why would I think otherwise? Until I started noticing all the different labels. Labels like natural, no growth promoting antibiotics and no medically important antibiotics mean nothing. They aren't even defined by the USDA. On the other hand, terms like antibiotic-free and raised without antibiotics, although they are defined by the USDA, are only 100% reliable if they appear on labels accompanied by the USDA verification shield. Purchasing Organic ensures that you are making an antibiotic-free dietary decision because Purchasing Organic promises that the USDA is regularly investigating the food production process where that food is grown or raised. And there's the Simple Truth Meat Brand again. Who knew that one brand could have so many labels? The inconvenient truth is that organic food is more expensive and we never really know what we're getting when we go out to a restaurant. But I truly believe that if we all make the change, it will become the norm. 92 years ago, when he first discovered penicillin, Sir Alexander Fleming warned that the discovery of antibiotics would begin an era of new abuses and boy was he right. So unless you're my brother who says he'll be the fun uncle and take my future kids to McDonald's when I'm not around to feast on some filet of fish, no doubt. I expect you want to claim control of your health. You, of course, have the right to it. Thank you.