Animal Farms Are Pumping Up Superbugs

oxide7 writes "The philosopher Frederick Nietzsche once famously said, 'That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.' That may or may not be true for human beings, but it is certainly true for bacteria. The superbugs are among us and they are not leaving. Indeed, they are growing stronger. 'The problem is that the animal agriculture industry makes massive use of low-dose antibiotics for growth promotion and in place of effective infection prevention methods,' Young said, adding that the farm animal population is much larger than the human population. The low-dose antibiotics do not kill the disease. They make the disease stronger, more resistant to those and other antibiotics. The animals — the cattle, pigs and chickens — thus treated become superbug factories. The diseases stay in them and they wash off them to infect the surrounding environment."

Comments

Re:I have an idea to stop the need for anti-biotic

[robably]

How about we feed the animals the foods they were DESIGNED to eat

Even better, feed them the food they have EVOLVED to eat.

Re:Is this a news?

[commodore64_love]

GOOD. I hope banning antibiotics in livestock passes. Also banning ag companies from accusing innocent farmers of stealing their gene-modified corn.

This is a perfect example of unintended consequences, where antibiotics cure human disease, but then the germs "fight back" and revive in a more deadly form which we don't know how to stop. I wouldn't be surprised if the 2100s experiences as much death from disease as people in the 1800s did.