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Last posts on private forums:  sare  2008-06-16 09:56:33 matthew 2008-04-12 21:25:59 pieniadz 2008-04-12 20:52:26
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Last posts on private blogs: matthew 2008-04-12 21:25:17 mary 2008-04-12 19:27:47 |
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Lastly added medical terms:
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You are in: Main Page / Medical articles / News / Antibiotics in the Meat
A new research by University of California reveals that the use of powerful antibiotic streptomycin in the meat e.g. to make turkeys grow faster promotes the growth of bacteria resistant to streptomycin. It isn't new to learn that agribusiness feeds livestock with loads of antibiotics.
Even though hundreds of studies have been published about this issue no one actually cares about the results. However, new questions arise systematically about the antibiotic abuse. It's probably high time to rethink the practice of animal production for industrial-scale. Scientists from John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore and the Pew Charitable Trusts are calling for putting a ban on antibiotics use in livestock.
Antibiotics are usually injected for two reasons: to make animals grow faster and to control the spread of bacteria between animals. These ensure 42-day long period of raising (instead of 92 in a natural way) and prevent from spreading disease between animals kept in cages slightly larger than their bodies. The problem is that antibiotics are given to healthy animals in small doses, which violates the main principle of their use. Antibiotics are intended to be given to sick people and animals for a specific period of time. In other circumstances, bacteria can simply become resistant to the drug. Even Alexander Fleming, the founder of penicillin, warned that antibacterial-resistant strains can develop if they're exposed to insufficient amounts of antibiotics. This is what agribusiness is actually doing.
Still, there is no clear evidence that this method of breeding animals affects resistance to antibiotics in humans. There are signs that could become a proof e.g. if you check a manure lagoon on a industrial farm you will find antibiotic-resistant strains of all sorts. Flies transmit the manure to food far from the farm. In addition to that, 98 percent of bacteria in hog farms are resistant to two types of antibiotics, farm workers often suffer from asthma and people in communities around have high rates of undiagnosed illnesses. On the contrary, no one would say chicken, pork or beef on their plates is unhealthy because animals were fed with antibiotics.
Agricultural companies claim this made meat cheaper, if they were banned to use antibiotics there would be outbreaks of salmonella, E.coli, etc. But this is only due to conditions in which animals are kept that breed bacteria.
Added by:
mary
not connected with health care system
Added on:
2009-06-19 13:24:49 ,
Updated:
2009-06-19 13:29:14
Bibliography:
www.livescience.com
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