What’s being done now?
The purpose of this blog is not to turn you away from eating meat from livestock that has been treated with antibiotics. There is actually little research that supports claims that the antibiotics fed to animals have a direct impact on our health. Most antibiotics are either excreted out by the animal or cooked out during food preparation. What are affecting humans is what always has infected us…pathogens. And because of antibiotic resistance, they are getting harder to treat. The FDA has recently asked the pharmaceutical industry to stop selling antibiotics to farms that only use them as growth hormones. But epidemiologist prefers to track the number of antibiotics used rather than sold. This way they can evaluate if antibiotics are being used properly. Instead of sales going down, they have actually increased. From 2009 to 2012 by about 16 percent.
Change doesn’t just come from one side of the spectrum. The FDA, the food industry, pharmaceutical companies and the CDC need to work together to combat antibiotic resistance. Hospitals around the county are seeing resistance as a bigger threat every year and something has to change.
I hope I have provided you with insightful information on this current debate but I couldn’t have done it without the help of my source material. I encourage you to read back through and click on the hyperlinks to learn more about antibiotics, U.S farming, and antibiotic resistance. Below is the full list of my source material.
Also feel free to comment in the comment section!
UPDATE!!!
The FDA has set new antibiotic regulations to help combat resistance.
A big contributor to my research was from a FRONTLINE PBS documentary, The Trouble with Antibiotics. It is by far the most interesting PBS film I’ve watched.
