Posted on 09/19/2013 6:06:41 AM PDT by chessplayer
Washington -- The Centers for Disease Control on Monday confirmed a link between routine use of antibiotics in livestock and growing bacterial resistance that is killing at least 23,000 people a year.
CDC Director Thomas Frieden called for urgent steps to scale back and monitor use, or risk reverting to an era when common bacterial infections of the urinary tract, bloodstream, respiratory system and skin routinely killed and maimed.
"We will soon be in a post-antibiotic era if we're not careful," Frieden said. "For some patients and some microbes, we are already there."
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
The article is correct, and the problem is not limited to the United States. And, it's not just cattle. It's also (and probably much more frequently) poultry. AB's are routinely added to the water supply to keep the flocks from contracting diseases. Such routine addition where there is no active infection condition should NOT be allowed.
Make no mistake about it, this is one major reason for the development of antibiotic resistance.
Our family farm at one time or another raised both cattle and chickens. The cattle were treated only when ill. The chickens were routinely and regulary dosed with antibiotics. This was back in the days when nobody had ever heard (or even thought) of antibiotic resistance. And we sold the farm long ago.
The article is pretty much hooey. Farmers and the government have been aware of, and have been controlling, antibiotics use for decades, and are very aware of overuse problems and try to avoid them. Here are some good references, the first is simple, the second more detailed.
Animal Health Institute:
http://www.ahi.org/issues-advocacy/animal-antibiotics/
Pork industry (though really, “Pork Cares” as a slogan?):
http://www.porkcares.org/h56hu/index.html?gclid=CMP4id_T17kCFY9xQgodwBkAsg
I’m not a hand sanitizer mom like so many other parents I know. We’ve even switched our hand soaps to regular soap and not antibacterial soap. I insist my kids get dirty. We rarely use antibiotics, and I think each of them has only been on them twice. My family is quite healthy, and I think one of the reasons is because of dirt.
I’ve long thought the routine use of antibiotics in animal feed to marginally improve productivity is madness. We put people in jail for the misuse of opiate painkillers, but have few controls over the use and misuse of antibiotics. It’s going to cost lives.
The meds administered to cattle must cease 60-90 days prior to slaughter, depending on the med. That is so there are no traces of the meds in the animals system.
These meds area administered IM, intramuscular, or sub cue, under the skin. They are not administered orally, that is by mouth or via the feed. This is significant, The drugs admnistered to your sister IM or IV would have been ineffective orally. The same is true of the cattle drugs. Even if the drugs were present in the meat, it would have no effect on you, at least not as an antibiotic.
Furthermore, were it true that antibiotics were present in meat available for sale, news agencies would go down to their local store, buy some meat, have it tested, and tada, major news story, tainted meat, but that is not the case. To my knowledge, no one has done such a thing and it is simple enough to trace.
Also, we must keep our cattle meds cool. I would suspect that cooking the meat thoroughly would kill any effectiveness of any trace meds in meat.
Finally, if this were true, why do we not see a problem with dogs and cats? Carcasses go to renderers for whom there is no withdrawl times for meds. OF course this stuff is so thoroughly processed, it is unlikely that any meds present could survive with their effectiveness in tact.
Yes, I work around cattle.
Grow & butcher your own.
I buy my beef from the cowboy down the road. Clean grass fed natural meat.
Those aren't farms; they're animal factories.
Thank you. She had hurt her knee at home and could barely stand or walk. Went to the hospital, got one of those super bugs, and there was nothing they could do for her.
Leaping to extended conclusions for rhetorical purposes does no service to the discussion. There are several reasons for antibiotic resistance developing in people, the most notable of which is individuals who do not complete their course because "I feel fine now." The drugs then kill all but the most resistant strains and slowly select them to develop resistant populations. This is not to say that antibiotics should not be prescribed, but they probably are over-prescribed and we do have the problem of non-compliant patients. The two complications abet each other.
I do not prefer “organic” filthy food.
Organic food is a mixed bag, but to call all organically grown food "filthy" degrades your argument to the point of incredibility.
Just like the Navy Yard shooting...sequestration’s fault!
yes indeed, I’ve traveled far and wide lol there are also countries that are much more fastidious about cleanliness than we are..for example Germany.
Far more troubling are the amount of antibacterial products we are using to clean. It’s quite worrisome, children are growing up with no defense mechanisms with the advent of super bugs on the horizon.
As far as bio/organic produce which you see as “filthy” lol because they contain bugs and other things commonly found outdoors? Warning... don’t wander too far outside.
I know I have always admired the German cleanliness
And the bug thing, I used to buy that organic garbage til my cabinets kept hatching the meal moths from the stuff I bought, so now, it’s strictly the stuff with no bugs. Bugs outside don’t bother me so much. I hate having them in m house.
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