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Farm animals in India and China are becoming more resistant to antibiotics

nature.com

11–20 of 122 posts

Re: Farm animals in India and China are becoming more resistant to antibiotics

#11

I've been a vegetarian for a few years. Part of the impetus for my choice was the lack of regulation and health code standards in this country. Recent news that the federal government is reducing inspection of meat really does scare me. How many people need to die (like in the early 1900s) before we re-realize the importance of these regulations on public life? When will the next Upton Sinclair come along?

Upton Sinclair lamented the fact that nobody really got the point of The Jungle.

I think after all this time he is about to be proven right.

Re: Farm animals in India and China are becoming more resistant to antibiotics

#12

I've been a vegetarian for a few years. Part of the impetus for my choice was the lack of regulation and health code standards in this country. Recent news that the federal government is reducing inspection of meat really does scare me. How many people need to die (like in the early 1900s) before we re-realize the importance of these regulations on public life? When will the next Upton Sinclair come along?

Its simple to get to know your local rancher. You can even voice your concerns and have them heard by the person raising your beef, while walking the ranch on a nkce day. Factory farms are the bigger problem, not just meat per-se.

Re: Farm animals in India and China are becoming more resistant to antibiotics

#13
post #2

I'm absolutely shocked who could have predicted this

We need a new drug platform because the current model only satisfy the owners of the pharma corporations.

I recently listened to a podcast featuring Dr Matt McCarthy, who is an infection diseases physician and ethics professor and who authored the book Superbugs[1].

He did a good job (to a layperson such as myself anyway) of explaining why big pharma don't have much incentive to develop new antibiotics, possible financial interventions that may makes sense, and the alternative treatments that are being developed.

I haven't read the book, but he's done quite a bit of press around it on podcasts, youtube etc. Definitely worth a listen to learn more about the topic.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/42878826-superbugs

Re: Farm animals in India and China are becoming more resistant to antibiotics

#14

Source paper https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6459/eaaw1944.ful... >From 2000 to 2018, the proportion of antimicrobial compounds with resistance higher than 50% (P50) increased from 0.15 to 0.41 in chickens and from 0.13 to 0.34 in pigs and plateaued between 0.12 and 0.23 in cattle. >Globally, 73% of all antimicrobials sold on Earth are used in animals raised for food. Jeeeesus. It sure feels like humanity…

Resistance to antibiotics would take us back to 1900, not to the brink of annihilation.

My point isn't to dismiss the problem, just that it would mean things like surgery being much riskier, not massive die offs.

Re: Farm animals in India and China are becoming more resistant to antibiotics

#15

I've been a vegetarian for a few years. Part of the impetus for my choice was the lack of regulation and health code standards in this country. Recent news that the federal government is reducing inspection of meat really does scare me. How many people need to die (like in the early 1900s) before we re-realize the importance of these regulations on public life? When will the next Upton Sinclair come along?

Upton Sinclair lamented the fact that nobody really got the point of The Jungle. I think after all this time he is about to be proven right.

Well, the point of the jungle is that we need to form a socialist worker's state. Instead, everyone freaked out about sausages.

He had a quote along the lines of "I aimed for the heart and hit the stomach"

edit: > "I aimed for the public's heart," Sinclair later wrote, "and by accident hit it in the stomach."

Re: Farm animals in India and China are becoming more resistant to antibiotics

#16
post #2

I'm absolutely shocked who could have predicted this

We need a new drug platform because the current model only satisfy the owners of the pharma corporations.

this has nothing to do with how Big Pharma develops drugs...

Re: Farm animals in India and China are becoming more resistant to antibiotics

#17

"the four types of antimicrobial drug most commonly used in farm animals to help them gain weight — tetracyclines, sulfonamides, quinolones and penicillins — are also the ones with highest resistance rates." It never ceases to amaze me the decisions that we as a species make with full knowledge of the consequences that seem to be geared towards implementing wide spread disaster. We as a species have very much decided…

What's rational for the individual is not always well aligned with what's rational for the society.

Re: Farm animals in India and China are becoming more resistant to antibiotics

#18

I've been a vegetarian for a few years. Part of the impetus for my choice was the lack of regulation and health code standards in this country. Recent news that the federal government is reducing inspection of meat really does scare me. How many people need to die (like in the early 1900s) before we re-realize the importance of these regulations on public life? When will the next Upton Sinclair come along?

Upton Sinclair lamented the fact that nobody really got the point of The Jungle. I think after all this time he is about to be proven right.

You're correct that he complained about that, but the point was supposed to be about the exploitation and abuse of laborers.

Re: Farm animals in India and China are becoming more resistant to antibiotics

#19

I've been a vegetarian for a few years. Part of the impetus for my choice was the lack of regulation and health code standards in this country. Recent news that the federal government is reducing inspection of meat really does scare me. How many people need to die (like in the early 1900s) before we re-realize the importance of these regulations on public life? When will the next Upton Sinclair come along?

Its simple to get to know your local rancher. You can even voice your concerns and have them heard by the person raising your beef, while walking the ranch on a nkce day. Factory farms are the bigger problem, not just meat per-se.

> Its simple to get to know your local rancher.

>Factory farms are the bigger problem, not just meat per-se.

Not just meat farms! One thing vegans and vegetarians often gloss over is the death per calorie involved in crop fields. Those thousands of acres have animals in them, and the machines sure dont stop for every varmit that gets in the way.

It is not clear what the right answer is (assuming all you care about is number of animal lives, which is an inadequate measure anyway). The best advice i know of is to only eat well raised cow meat because 1 cow provides a lot of calories, and vegetables, chickens, and pigs etc do not and kill lots of animals.

Re: Farm animals in India and China are becoming more resistant to antibiotics

#20

I've been a vegetarian for a few years. Part of the impetus for my choice was the lack of regulation and health code standards in this country. Recent news that the federal government is reducing inspection of meat really does scare me. How many people need to die (like in the early 1900s) before we re-realize the importance of these regulations on public life? When will the next Upton Sinclair come along?

Unfortunately even fruit and vegetables aren't safe.

Syphilis and TB antibiotics are being used to combat disease on orange trees in Florida:

The E.P.A. has proposed allowing as much as 650,000 pounds of streptomycin to be sprayed on citrus crops each year. By comparison, Americans annually use 14,000 pounds of aminoglycosides, the class of antibiotics that includes streptomycin

In its decision to approve two drugs for orange and grapefruit trees, the E.P.A. largely ignored objections from the C.D.C. and the F.D.A., which fear that expanding their use in cash crops could fuel antibiotic resistance in humans.

scientists are especially worried that the drugs will cause pathogenic bacteria in the soil to become resistant to the compounds and then find their way to people through groundwater or contaminated food.[1]

Several lawmakers wrote to the EPA last month to urge a rethink of the policy given legitimate scientific concerns around the issue of antimicrobial resistance. To quote the letter:

Antibiotics are life-saving medicines and, except in extraordinary circumstances, should only be used to treat specific illnesses in people and animals," the lawmakers wrote. "EPA's assessments appear to ignore scientific evidence, violate the principle of judicious antibiotic use, and could create unnecessary harm to human health by authorizing an unprecedented amount of medically important antibiotics to be used for plant agriculture.[2]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/health/antibiotics-orange...

[2] http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2019/08/lawmakers...

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