I have been railing against factory farming for the last thirty years, telling my patients and Vitamin Customers of the dangers I foresaw from the many unsound practices of the participating farms. Among those practices that I saw as being dangerous to consumer health was the massing together of huge numbers of animals in unnatural and unhealthy environments that promote disease, and therefore require aggressive preventive measures such as blanket antibiotic administration. In time, blanket antibiotic administration to these huge herds, flocks, etc. in theory had to lead to resistant strains of microorganisms… and that’s exactly what has happened… and nobody wants to take responsibility for the disaster.
On Feb. 9 of this year, Katie Couric of CBS investigated the overuse of antibiotics in livestock and some of the ramifications. In the investigation, a University of Iowa study was featured that found a brand new strain of MRSA (Methacillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus). The hog study found MRSA in 70% of the animals and 64% of the workers. Several farms in Iowa and Western Illinois were studied. All of the farms with MRSA were factory farms and all used antibiotics routinely. On antibiotic free farms that were not factory farms, no MRSA was found.
Most of us don’t think much about MRSA, and when we do we think of hospital related infections and perhaps the occasional case of an athletic locker room case of transmission, but beware. Our government is once again involved in covering up the enormity of a problem it should have controlled with more careful inspections decades ago. Drug resistant infections killed over 70,000 Americans last year. That’s more deaths than from AIDS, and we can characterize this as an “emerging health crisis” like CBS did or call it what it is, which is an epidemic.
I have advised buying meat and poultry from smaller organically oriented farms for decades for these very reasons. Unfortunately, antibiotic resistant strains like MRSA can spread in many ways. It’s a matter of time before it’s in the food chain (if it isn’t already), and it can even be in the water runoff from a farm, and/or in the air. Things can happen very quickly with these deadly antibiotic resistant bacterial strains, which is why this factory farming practice and flagrant use of antibiotics has to be stopped.
Unfortunately, as long as the Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex is making a fortune providing these antibiotics, the government agencies that they tend to control will not be responsive to the public’s needs. It is unfortunate that the government agencies that were put in place to protect us have been manipulated by the very businesses that they were to supposed to protect us against, but that’s politics for you. You can begin to change this with your vote and your pocket book at the super market.
We can’t have it both ways… safe food and cheap food. I’ll vote for safe, and I hope you resolve to do the same for the sake of our children and grandchildren.
