USA: Your supper & superbugs

Anyone who eats meat, milk or eggs is also eating the antibiotics given to the animals raised for those products

November 18, 2007

As if we didn't have enough to worry about, now comes the alarming news that killer bugs have made the leap from hospitals and nursing homes to playgrounds and locker rooms. And the rise of MRSA, an antibiotic-resistant staphylococcus bacterium, can largely be attributed to the overuse of antibiotics -- in humans and animals.
Approximately 70 percent of the antibiotics used in the United States aren't given to human patients -- they are fed to farmed animals. The filthy, crowded conditions on factory farms are breeding grounds for disease.

Billions of chickens, turkeys, pigs and other animals killed for food each year in this country live mired in their own waste. The conditions are so deplorable that the animals are fed a steady dose of antibiotics just to keep them alive long enough to send them to slaughter....

Source: Your supper & superbugs

Other EVANA-articles about this topic:
One of the persistent problems of industrial agriculture is the inappropriate use of antibiotics (en)

USA: FDA Rules Override Warnings About Drug (en)

Australia: Less antibiotic use in food animals leads to less drug resistance in people, study shows (en)

EU acts to combat resistance to antibiotics (en)

USA: Researchers find animal antibiotics in vegetables (en)