There should be laws against giving antibiotics to farm animals. We're giving our battle plans to the enemy. Smallpox, by itself, has killed far more people than all the terrorism (Islamic and otherwise) in human history. It's fashionable to spread fear of terrorism, but here's an area where we have the ability to improve the human condition as well as national and international security.

Bacteria are turning immune to antibiotics. Farming uses antibiotics to prevent infections, promote growth, to channel more of the animal's energy into growing food (vs, say, bone), and other reasons, as well as to treat actual infections. This is creating a Darwinian selection environment that favors the evolution of any trait making a bacteria resist antibiotics.

Obviously antibiotics are the reason plenty of diseases, like pneumonia, aren't killing off tremendous numbers of humans. It seems like this is every bit as much a threat as some bombing in FarOffistan, and the lucky thing is this would take drastically less attention and resources to fix. Neanderthal man had a life expectancy of 20 to 30 years. Today, thanks to modern medicine, humans are expecting to live to about 80, and gaining a year for most years we live. But we risk turning that trend on its head by making one of our best weapons less and less useful.

What do people think?

The scientists have so far looked at 40 different samples of bacteria from pigs and discovered resistance genes to tetracyclines, ciprofloxacin, and ampicillin, although so far no resistance has been found to extended-spectrum cephalosporins.

http://www.innovations-report.de/htm...cht-33229.html

I don't think people should eat animals and I don't think that we should give antibiotics to animals unless they are sick.
Even though I am vegetarian, I still eat eggs and dairy products. I see why farmers want to give antibiotics to all their animals, but don't agree with it. I don't want to get sick from eating something a sick animal produced, but I don't want bacteria to become totally immune to our antibiotics either.

You're right on this one. Overuse of antibiotics is being addressed more and more in medicine but not in the food industry, and overuse there stands to breed resistant strains of bacteria and communicate them to the public faster. I think that animals raised for food should be treated humanely, and this is but one way that not doing so will bite us all in the collective posterior. Better make sure that burger's well done.

tim

I think we should treat animals humanely, too, but I think the 3 of us are in the minority on that. And I think there's a very compelling case to be made for responsible antibiotic use even if we're not going to address the "animal rights" issue.

I ate an organic golden delicious apple today..

I didn't mean to take it down the animal rights route. Sorry for that. But I definitely agree with you about the overuse of antibiotics and farm animals. Doctors have to be concerned about giving out antibiotics to their patients. But then we just flood animals with them. Bacteria is bacteria whether its on/in a farm animal or on/in a human. It just doesn't make sense to be so restrictive of antibiotics for humans then overuse them on animals.

Originally Posted by Feydakin

I ate an organic golden delicious apple today..

Animals are also organic...

Whether you like meat or veggies, they do the same thing for both. They use medicines on animals and chemicals for fruits and veggies.

most of the foods right now are organic because they want to enlarge the food so that more consumers will buy that..

Originally Posted by jabo

Whether you like meat or veggies, they do the same thing for both. They use medicines on animals and chemicals for fruits and veggies.

But we don't eat pesticide as humans. It's true what you say, and we may well be better off not spraying plant crops with poison. That's kind of debatable at this point, but in principal, I agree. Still, if bugs evolve a resistance to one type of pesticide, we can use another. There are more varieties of poison that kill small insects (protecting the crop from pests) than there are antibiotics that will kill a bacterial infection and do limited harm to people.