An unlikely alternative to antibiotics: cayenne, sage, and cinnamon

Each extract has its own unique properties, and scientists are still studying which compounds are strong enough to be useful in agriculture. But the phytogenics that have had success in clinical tests tend to have a broad spectrum of positive outcomes—promoting growth and health in a variety of mutually reinforcing ways.

It starts, as you might guess, with taste. On the crudest level, botanical extracts work up the appetite: Livestock, it turns out, prefer a well-seasoned meal just like we do. One study, for example, found that chickens eat more when their food is spiced with dried ginger; other research has found that thyme, rosemary, and oregano have a similar effect.

But the appeal of spices is not just gustatory. Spices have antimicrobial effects that help them fight spoilage and prolong shelf life, and human societies have used them over the centuries as a kind of primitive food safety plan. As it turns out, phytogenics have the same effect in a pig’s (or chicken’s) gut as they have in a seasoned dish: They make it more difficult for pathogens to reproduce, and reduce the likelihood of disease.

At the same time, essential oils can also help farm animals to gain weight faster. New research suggests that phytogenics increase “feed efficiency”—they make it easier for pigs and chickens to digest their food and convert it into body mass. That happens in a few different ways. When the right essential oils are used in the proper amounts, they’ve been shown to help promote intestinal growth in chicks and piglets, increase the presence of healthful gut bacteria, and stimulate enzymes that help digestion, and even make certain nutrients more bio-available. These properties may ultimately help phytogenic compounds fill in for antibiotics.

A 2015 study in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that measured agricultural antibiotic use across the world found that we use 63,000 tons of antibiotics each year to raise cows, chickens and pigs—more than twice what doctors use to treat human beings. That’s not even the worst part. That amount is supposed to increase by 66% worldwide in the next 20 years, NPR reports, as meat production ramps up to meet the demand of those in developing countries who increasingly eat it.

Overuse of antibiotics in agriculture is already a major public health threat, one that’s been documented and decried by scientists and NGOs for years. Hopefully, there’s a solution in the most innocuous of places: the spices that wait innocuously in our kitchen cupboards.