The anti-antibacteria
July 7th, 2007 by Eric
This May we talked about corn. We told you about the effects that this plant has on our society, economy, environment, and especially our health. If you haven’t read it, you should. If you have read it, you should read it again. It’s full of information that you won’t want to know, but should. You can find the whole shebang here.
Corn is very quick to add weight to the animals (and, consequently, the people who eat those animals). But corn is not a natural food for the animals that eat it. In most cases, cows in particular, the animals require antibiotics in order to properly digest it. Here are some facts from the Union of Concerned Scientists:
An estimated 70 percent of antibiotics and related drugs produced in this country are used for nontherapeutic purposes such as accelerating animal growth and compensating for overcrowded and unsanitary conditions on large-scale confinement facilities known as “factory farms.” This translates to about 25 million pounds of antibiotics and related drugs fed every year to livestock for nontherapeutic purposes—almost eight times the amount given to humans to treat disease.
The use of these antibiotics on animals, along with the overprescription of antibiotics by doctors has led to a dramatic increase in bacterial resistance to these drugs, forcing doctors to use increasingly stronger antibiotics to treat relatively minor infections. In other words, the bacteria are becoming immune to the treatment.
Fortunately there is a bill in Congress that aims to eliminate those antibiotics in feed animals:
The Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act of 2007, bipartisan legislation introduced in Congress, would phase out the routine use of medically important antibiotics as feed additives in animal agriculture. More than 350 health, consumer, agricultural, environmental, humane, religious and other organizations have endorsed the legislation.
I’m asking you to join them, just click this sentance. It’ll only take a second. Okay, maybe ten seconds. And next time you’re buying beef, look for the pasture-fed stuff, and avoid that Vancomycin steak dinner. It’s better for your health, the environment, the animals, the economy…
Hopefully this photographer feeds his cows grass
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