Not Just for Meat Eaters
I'm an unrepentant carnivore, but even the strictest vegan suffers from the ridiculous over-use of antibiotics in factory farms. Now President Obama is acting to restrict the practice.
Good news from the NYT:"The Obama administration announced Monday that it would seek to ban many routine uses of antibiotics in farm animals in hopes of reducing the spread of dangerous bacteria in humans.
In written testimony to the House Rules Committee, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, principal deputy commissioner of food and drugs, said feeding antibiotics to healthy chickens, pigs and cattle -- done to encourage rapid growth -- should cease. And Dr. Sharfstein said farmers should no longer be able to use antibiotics in animals without the supervision of a veterinarian.
Both practices lead to the development of bacteria that are immune to many treatments, he said.
This is really important. Antibiotics make diseases that used to be fatal into minor annoyances. But resistance to antibiotics is rising, and we are not developing new antibiotics to replace the ones bacteria are becoming resistant to. This is in part because spending money to develop new antibiotics doesn't make sense for pharmaceutical companies.
SNIP
We need to find a way to promote the development of new antibiotics. In the meantime, however, we should try not to do things that promote antibiotic resistance. Feeding antibiotics to farm animals not to treat diseases, but just to make them grow faster, is one of those things. There are lots of ways of promoting animals' growth that do not put people's lives at risk. We should find them.
(Note: this would probably also lead to improvements in the treatment of farm animals. When farm animals are fed antibiotics, you can get away with much more dubious hygiene than you could otherwise. This would also be a very good thing -- though I don't support factory farming in any form.)
Hilzoy, who posted the above at the Washington Monthly, is retiring from blogging. Hilzoy's blogging at the Monthly has been a revelation to me, providing me with not just great material but superb insight. Hilzoy, you will be missed.
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1 comment:
I support this move by the Obama administration wholeheartedly. Beef, pork, and poultry today are all pumped up so full of antibiotics and vitamins, and indirectly with pesticides and other chemicals, it's amazing we don't all glow in the dark! Beef, in particular, has lost much of its flavor compared to a few decades back. It's damn near impossible to consistently find a mouth-wateringly delicious steak today, and that pisses me off! Of course, part of this may be due to the fact that we are importing more beef than ever before and no one has to disclose where the meat came from. It may be that it is simply less fresh (and more color-dyed) than it used to be, I don't know. But the flavor and texture are simply not what they used to be!
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