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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."
well known fact. And no regulation to stop it.
Moderation is overrated.
How about we feed the animals the foods they were DESIGNED to eat (i.e. Feed Cows GRASS, Not Corn). Yes, the grass might cost more but you wouldn't need to pump them full of antibiotics.
UPS Sucks
I mean, anyone who has not had their head stuck in the ground for the past 30 years should be well aware of the whole antibiotics/superbug issue. The only possible exceptions being the evolution deniers and, I bet even many of them have some twisted concept that reconciles their philosophy with superbugs.
However, I was reading that there is a new class of antibiotics in development, which are based on immune system antigens and, for some reason (anyone know more?) are thought to, because of their mechanism of action, not be susceptible to the same problem of evolving the bacteria to survive them.
I don't know if its true or how they work but, if the article I saw a while back is right, then, they could be useful here. Then again, this just seems like a bad idea overall.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Occasionally I get to drive by a huge corporate cattle ranch while on a trip; the animal's living conditions are deplorable. No shade in a hot arid climate, and hardly enough room to move around, they pack as many animals into a corral as possible. They stand all day in wet muddy shit, costs too much to provide land to roam and people to round them up.
In my opinion, this exemplifies what is wrong with unabashed Capitalism. Who cares what happens, just make us more money now, is a philosophy ultimately doomed to failure. Time to get smart.
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
I am not a vegetarian, but we need to reduce our meat consumption. I'll never be a vegetarian, I'm too fond of my Sicilian-American culinary traditions, but two things need to happen: First, we need to reduce the amount of meat we consume, and we need to consume better meat when we do. This diet that America has of eating a big bucket of meat and cheese from Denny's is just ridiculous, and it's killing us on multiple fronts.
I try to follow a basic plan: Vegan (or Vegetarian) before 6pm. I try and make sure the meat I do eat for dinner is high quality. I pay a little extra for it, but the savings throughout the day balance out. There are other types of diets that would be great for reducing meat consumption without any of us thinking we're suddenly living off of soy and wheat germ. Eating smaller portions of meat, but still using it for flavoring, for instance. Even just getting the idea in our heads that we shouldn't eat meat for every single meal.
Factory farming has got to go, it's horrible on so many fronts. I'm not a foodie, and I don't have vegan super powers, and I recognize that people are on a budget, and can't shop for organic at whole foods (hell, I can't afford to, and I have a decent job). But we have to figure some kind of practical way forward, because we can't keep packing animals in to dark crates, standing in their own filth and pumping them full of drugs and then call that dinner.
I concur with this assessment. These people feed them all manner of antibiotics and steroids, and wonder why there are negative effects. We feed our livestock only non-GM feed that has not been treated, and they also eat bugs, grass etc., exactly what they are meant to feed on. Purely organic. The big producers are always messing with nature's way, and then when it goes wrong, they say, "wait, I have another hairbrained idea that MIGHT work." I won't eat that crap, and neither should you. BTW, ever wonder where moobs come from? Take a guess.
Some people still do. It's not something you can get at Walmart but if you live anywhere close to the country there is a good chance that:
1) There are farmers markets around. The best and freshest produce and meat money can buy, and usually competitive on price.
2) Some farmers let you just buy a side of a cow (or an entire cow). So for $x00 you can buy an entire cow. The farmer raises it, kills it and you can have a say in how it is butchered. This does require a deep freezer (unless you're going to throw one heck of a braai). Usually ends up cheaper than super market and you know exactly where your meat is coming from.
Cut out the middle man.
http://www.foodincmovie.com
This is not a bad example of the superstitious fallacy that market forces fix everything, and we should deregulate all markets because regulations only get in the way, blah blah blah. Feedlots exist because in the short term they are by far most efficient from the strict standpoint of profitability. They are monstrously inefficient overall because they externalize the costs of waste disposal, coliform contamination of meat, feed costs (corn, the favorite animal feed, is subsidized), high fat-content in the resulting meat (due to the use of corn instead of forage), etc. The public must bear these costs so that meat producers can enjoy a profitable business. The power of the market is largely a myth that exists mainly in academic discussions rather than in real life.
disclaimer, I raise some cattle
This whole scene with the huge feedlots is a ripoff for the consumer and the end user eater..and for us small farmers. We only have a hand full of big packers in the US. Small farmers are forced to sell their feeder cattle at auction, because it is SO difficult to market full size eatin cows locally. It's possible, but mostly it just sucks, almost impossible People just don't have full size freezers anymore where they can fit a "side" or half a cow. So, we are forced to sell the cows at a lower weight, typically around 500-600 lbs at auction, for a suck ass cheap price, so the very few corporate buyers get them and ship them to the feedlots where they are fattened up like you describe in medium rank conditions. They have basically a ripoff cartel that sets prices. We as small farmers don't make much at all, most of the loot is made upstream at the packers and then the shippers, then with the wall street speculators who make a *ton* for doing nothing at all except being leeches. That $8.99 1lb ribeye you are eating we got paid around a buck for...maybe
If more people would buy locally, we could change this. Our cows are grass fed and happy, plenty of room to move around, shade, all of that. What happens after the auction is out of our hands. You as consumers can change this, buy local, spend the money and get a decent sized freezer, you will get much cheaper beef and better quality.
Including chicken litter, which may include undigested chicken feed, which includes mammal tissues. Producers voluntarily stopped using chicken litter as cattle feed recently, but could go back to using it at any time.
THIS!
I (we) buy all of our food directly from farms. We live in a suburb of New York City, and still we have found farms not too far away.
We buy a 1/4 cow (we split it with three other families) and it feeds us for a year. All of our produce comes from farms as well.
Our beef and chicken is raised walking around eating grass and bugs and whatever it would naturally eat.
The food tastes better and is better for us.
A month doesn't go by that I don't hear of some horrible contamination-caused food recall that doesn't affect me or my family.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Until they mutate. Which is where they came from in the first place.
Probably way back when multicellular life was just differentiating itself from other forms of proto-bacteria.
The mutations necessary to be infectious in a mammal's cell versus a bacerial cell is just too extreme to be a credible threat.
I don't read AC A human right
You bring up some valid points and your insight is an appreciated antidote to a poorly executed article.
But (putting GM feed aside), there remains one big aspect about factory farms I cannot get past...
Are the animals experiencing a quality of life which doesn't include standing around in shit?
Then they are no longer animals. They are active meat cultures. They may not be stressed, but I know plenty of fat idiots who are generally not stressed either and their lives are also pathetic compared to free range humans. When driving past factory chicken farms, the air for a mile in every direction is filled with the stench of hell. Life existing the center of that hell may not be overly stressed, but it's still not the right place for living things. And I do imagine that egg laying chickens stacked in boxes, despite any efforts to mitigate their stress levels don't experience what one might call "sanguine" lives. Same goes for milking cows to a lesser degree, but only because you can't stack ruminants.
I know this doesn't fit well into the question, "Well, how do you propose we feed all these people?" While there are better ways, better diets, and better means for managing populations of both humans and farm animals, the fact remains, we are where we are and it isn't pretty.
So what can I do? Well, I eat free range and I know my farmers and I've met the herds and the birds. I'm satisfied that I'm not contributing unduly to lousy lives among our fellow creatures occupying this world. Can this scale up to meet the present needs of the planet? I doubt it. We're pretty much screwed as a population. But that doesn't mean I have to play along. I'm not going to cause needless misery and degradation if I can avoid it. And if everybody had cared enough from the outset, I'm sure we could have built a far better system which respected the creatures who feed us as they deserve.
There's a ton of bad karma being generated and it will need to be paid back eventually. It always is.
-FL