Bill proposed to Limit Antibiotics in Livestock to Prevent the Rise of Antibiotic-Resistant Germs

Good article! Good luck trying to get this bill passed. Giving prophylactic antibiotics to food animals is one of those practices that seemed like a good idea half a century ago, but the down side is now pretty clear. As the article points out, thousands of people (probably tens of thousands) in the US die every year now from untreatable infections. Who shoulders the costs for these needless deaths? The factory farms? The pharmaceutical industry? No, they pocket the profits while the victims pay with their lives, the bereaved families pay in tragic personal loss and lost earnings, and the rest of the public pays in higher health care costs. This is robbing Peter to pay Paul.

I like to eat meat. This time of year my family practically lives off the barbeque. It is great to be able to buy meat for a few dollars a pound, grill up some steaks or Jamaican Jerk chicken, and then kick back with a good beer all fat and happy. If the price tripled to ten dollars a pound (which of course the agribiz and pharmabiz lobbyists would insist is a low ball estimate) my family would not starve - we would just cut back on the meat and grill more vegetables. Nor would we see increased starvation among the world's poor, because they really can't afford meat even at the current prices.

The human family is outgrowing its home. Whether we like it or not we are now living in a world where survival requires some trade-offs. Cheap meat vs higher health care costs is one of these trade-offs. And keep in mind that relying on factory farms for so much of our diet means we will continue to provide our microbe friends with an endless supply of septic pools laced with antibiotics. These are the training grounds where the microbes learn how to breach our defenses, and then swap their plasmids with each other, until they all develop immunity. It's as if we were telling Al Qaeda that we will be coming after them next Thursday afternoon, that our troops will be armed with sharp sticks, and wearing paper mache armor.

So the big losers will be the factory farms and the pharmaceutical industry (my sympathies to the farm workers who may lose their jobs wading in the toxic soup). My guess is that their war chests are overflowing, and that there are plenty of Senators and Representatives who will scarf up that campaign money in exchange for their votes.

Reduce antibiotics in cattle to eliminate creating superstrains of germs.

Should also do that to humans, I had rread that its getting to a point were researchers can't keep up with development of antobiotics to the germs resistance.