September 3, 2009

Incidents of contamination and compromised food safety, the breeding of drug-resistant super-bugs and the inhumane conditions endured by animals raised in extreme confinement are threatening meat consumers in the US, writes Mark Sommer, host of the award-winning, internationally syndicated radio program, A World of Possibilities.

In order to place pigs and poultry in such close quarters, farmers have turned to routinely feeding antibiotics to their animals not just to treat infections but to prevent bacterial disease outbreaks and promote weight gain. Sommers said up to 70 percent of all antibiotics used in the US go to farm animals and research shows that use of antibiotics in meat production other than to stem an actual infection is producing a chain of unintended negative effects. Biologists say it's breeding drug-resistant strains of bacteria that are undermining the effectiveness of the antibiotics we humans vitally depend on to fight our own infections.

The routine addition of antibiotics to animal feed has enabled highly adaptive bacteria to learn how to fend off most of the medicines used to kill them. In effect, say microbiologists, by overusing antibiotics, consumers have selected the strongest to survive but least prepared to defend against. Developing new antibiotics to protect against these mutating bacteria is so costly and time-consuming that researchers can't keep pace with their rapidly evolving resistance, they concluded.