Last week legislation was introduced to Congress that would prevent farmers and livestock producers from giving healthy farm animals antibiotics. Currently it is legal to feed healthy animals antibiotics to increase growth in a quicker time. It also prevents animals from contracting diseases that come from overcrowding in their housing.

The concern may seem insignificant, but the 50-year-old practice is dangerous to the animals, environment and humans. Steve Ells at the Huffington Post pointed out a particular situation with Russ Kremer, president of the Missouri Farmers Union.

“Kremer… who might have died from being gored in the knee cap by the tusk of a boar that had been fed a steady diet of penicillin to ward off strep. The infection that Russ contracted didn’t respond to the penicillin his doctor first prescribed, nor to the tetracycline, amoxicillin, or erythromycin that came after. Russ was lucky that a new generation of antibiotics existed at the time that kept him alive and, in his words, “woke him up to the fact that there’s something wrong with our food system.”

Despite our high demand for meat, the practice is highly dangerous and many are concerned about our well-being after consuming this meat. 17.8 to 24.6 million pounds of meat a year are grown with antibiotics.

If the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment passes this practice may become absolete. It is going to cause a huge stir amongst many livestock producers.

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Tags: antibiotics, cattle, congress, livestock

This entry was posted on Monday, April 6th, 2009 at 6:47 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.