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:It is all your fault

[Firethorn]

I to hate to buy my goods at stores which also sell animal-derived products.

I'll tell you what, I'm declaring this a double meat day in honor of you.

I'm going to have 2 venison steaks instead of one.

I don't feel the need to be AC.

Re:Is this a news?

[c6gunner]

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 think you're bastardizing the phrase "unintended consequence" there. If you pick a fight with me and I kick your ass, it's not an "unintended consequence" when you come back with a baseball bat.

Also ... are you proposing a solution, or just complaining? Are you suggesting that we should just ignore them, and hope they go away?