Futile Work
  • Home
  • News
    • Articles Of Interest
    • Numbers In The News
    • Life and Humanity
    • Quotes
    • Futile Updates
  • Curio
    • The Wonder of Lasers
    • Japan 2011 Psyop
    • Know Your Rights
    • Masonic Symbols and the LDS Temple
    • The Nun's Story
    • Special Edition
    • Explosion On The Launch Pad
  • Archive
    • Dave McGowan
    • Document Archive
    • Multi Media
    • Time For A Laugh
  • Blog

Articles of Interest

The FDA Says Farmers Are Giving Animals Too Many Antibiotics

10/3/2014

 
Picture
A piece of bad news from the Food and Drug Administration: In the war against antibiotic overuse, the antibiotics are winning.

The amount of antibiotics given to farm animals in the United States increased by 16 percent between 2009 and 2012, the agency announced in a new report, and nearly 70 percent of those used are considered “medically important” for humans. That’s trouble for us as much as it is for our four-legged friends, who consume the majority of antibiotics in the U.S.—as much as 80 percent are given to the chickens, pigs, and cows bound for our grocery-store shelves, both to spur more rapid growth and to proactively protect them from disease.

Such widespread use of antibiotics has led to bugs that are getting tougher and tougher to treat. Worldwide, strains of drug-resistant tuberculosis and gonorrhea are on the rise. In the U.S., antibiotic resistance caused more thantwo million illnesses in 2013, according to a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and an estimated 23,000 deaths, adding up to more than $20 million in healthcare costs.

“Although antibacterial resistance can be slowed,” Nicole Allan wrote in The Atlantic earlier this year, “it is inevitable. As a result, pharmaceutical companies have found antibiotics to be less worthwhile investments than drugs for chronic illnesses.” As the bacteria have evolved, in other words, our weapons against them haven’t kept pace.

Last month, President Obama signed an executive order to establish a new task force dedicated to addressing antibiotic resistance. And last year, the FDA announced a plan to cut down on animal antibiotic use, encouraging pharmaceutical companies to change the labels of their drugs so that they require veterinarian prescriptions (many are over-the-counter) and can no longer be used for growth enhancement. “It’s a big shift from the current situation, in which animal producers can go to a local feed store and buy these medicines over the counter and there is no oversight at all,” Michael Taylor, the FDA’s deputy commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine, told The New York Times when the guidelines were first announced. Given that this new data stops at 2012, though, it remains to be seen how much good they actually did.

Developing new antibiotics isn’t cheap, and neither is farming without them—but the cost of the alternative is much greater. “A post-antibiotic era,” the World Health Organization warned earlier this year, “far from being an apocalyptic fantasy, is instead a very real possibility for the 21st century."

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/10/american-meat-has-more-antibiotics-than-ever/381100/

jump to top | return to articles home

Comments are closed.
    Articles Home

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    November 2020
    June 2020
    November 2019
    October 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    December 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015
    October 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    May 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    July 2011
    May 2010
    April 2010
    May 2006
    December 2004
    October 2003
    June 2002
    September 2001
    February 2001
    February 1998

New Here?

Updates
About

Miscellany

​Contact
Disclaimer

Search

  • Home
  • News
    • Articles Of Interest
    • Numbers In The News
    • Life and Humanity
    • Quotes
    • Futile Updates
  • Curio
    • The Wonder of Lasers
    • Japan 2011 Psyop
    • Know Your Rights
    • Masonic Symbols and the LDS Temple
    • The Nun's Story
    • Special Edition
    • Explosion On The Launch Pad
  • Archive
    • Dave McGowan
    • Document Archive
    • Multi Media
    • Time For A Laugh
  • Blog