The Insane Overuse of Antibiotics in Industrial Meat Production
June 30th, 2010This is another one for your Captain Obvious file folder.
Also, if you’re concerned about issues like this, and try to eat clean food, you might be mentally ill. Have a nice day, and make sure to take your happy pills with your ammonia burger.
Via: New York Times:
Federal food regulators took a tentative step Monday toward banning a common use of penicillin and tetracycline in the water and feed given cattle, chickens and pigs in hopes of slowing the growing scourge of killer bacteria.
But the Food and Drug Administration has tried without success for more than three decades to ban such uses. In the past, Congress has stepped in at the urging of agricultural interests and stopped the agency from acting.
In the battle between public health and agriculture, the guys with the cowboy hats generally win.
The F.D.A. released a policy document stating that agricultural uses of antibiotics should be limited to assuring animal health, and that veterinarians should be involved in the drugs’ uses.
While doing nothing to change the present oversight of antibiotics, the document is the first signal in years that the agency intends to rejoin the battle to crack down on agricultural uses of antibiotics that many infectious disease experts oppose.
Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein, the agency’s principal deputy commissioner, refused at a news conference to give details about when the agency would take more concrete steps.
“We believe this is a public health issue of some urgency,” Dr. Sharfstein said. “We’re looking to see some progress soon.”
About 100,000 people die every year from hospital-acquired infections caused by bacteria that, because of overuse of antibiotics, have developed resistance to the usual remedies and cannot be killed with them. Many others die from superbugs contracted outside hospitals.
How many deaths can be attributed to agricultural uses of antibiotics?
“I don’t think anyone knows that number,” said Dr. James Johnson, a professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota, “but I think it’s substantial.”
Antibiotics are used in agriculture for three reasons: to promote animal growth, prevent illness and treat sickness. How antibiotics in feed and water help to fatten animals is not entirely clear.
The industrialization of animal husbandry has increased processors’ dependence on antibiotics because factory farm animals tend to be sicker and feed-lot diets can encourage bacterial infections.
The Union of Concerned Scientists estimated in 2001 that 84 percent of all antibiotics were used in agriculture and that 70 percent were used simply to promote animal growth, not to treat or prevent illness. The Animal Health Institute, a trade association, estimated that 13 percent of agricultural antibiotics were used to promote growth.
Research Credit: Miraculix
Here in Switzerland they use it too – but on a much lower level and even we have ppl rejecting our domestic grown meat.
I shudder to eat meat somewhere else on this world. As I see here, the consumer can force the big retailer into self-regulation. If the public would buy less or only some kind of controlled food, the retailers would have to adapt. I don’t blame anybody who wants to make a quick big buck, even if its monsanto. We vote with our feed/ts.
I don’t eat meat or fish, but maybe once or twice a year. Humans do need a certain amount of amino acids and whatever that only come from animals. I’m one of those “pussies” who don’t like killing animals.
Anyway one of the best ways to see how #%$&@# up things have got is to drive through the San Joaquin Valley and smell the pesticides being sprayed on your broccoli, carrots, artichokes, oranges, etc… Minimally it should probably make you buy organic or hopefully start growing your own food (which I do). If you are adventurous you can venture further and see how the cattle are treated.
@shoe2one
I don’t like killing for food, but the reality is that there’s no life without death.
Whether you’re somehow subsisting on peas and soy beans that you grow yourself, and squashing worms and other creatures under your boots, homekilling a steer, or fishing (if you’re lucky to live near a body of water that isn’t dangerously polluted) kill wisely, and with reverence.