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Cheap Meat, MRSA and Deadly Greed
If they aren't stopped soon, the WHO warns we are facing a 'doomsday scenario of a world without antibiotics'
Here is a news story that could determine whether you live or die. Many of the world's scientists are warning that one of the mightiest weapons doctors have against sickness is being rendered useless – so a few people can get richer, for a while. If they aren't stopped soon, the World Health Organization warns we are facing "a doomsday scenario of a world without antibiotics". It will be a world where transplant surgery is impossible. It will be a world where a simple appendix operation will be as routinely lethal as it was in 1927, before the discovery of penicillin. It will be a world where pneumonia and TB and gonorrhea are far harder to deal with, and claim many more of us. But it's a world that you and I don't have to see – if we act on this warning now.
As the scientists I've interviewed explain it, antibiotics do something simple. They kill, slow down or stall the growth of bacteria. They were one of the great advances of the 20th century, and they have saved millions of us. But they inherently contain a problem – one that was known about from very early on. They start an arms race. Use an antibiotic against bacteria, and it kills most of it – but it can also prompt the bacteria to evolve a tougher, stronger, meaner strain that can fight back. The bacteria is constantly mutating and dividing. The stronger the antibiotic, the stronger some bacteria will become to survive. It's Darwin dancing at super-speed.
Cheap Meat FactorySo the more we use antibiotics, the more we lose them. It's a battle played out on human bodies and in human wounds, with sky-high stakes. In many developed countries today, MRSA kills more people than AIDS. The obvious conclusion, then, is that we should use antibiotics sparingly, and only when they are really needed to treat the sick. But in one crucial area we are doing the exact opposite – for the sake of a few people's profits.
In the United States, Latin America, and Asia, animals being farmed for meat and milk are being automatically given antibiotics in their food all day – irrespective of whether they are healthy or sick. It's like slathering your child's Cornflakes with antibiotics, all year round. Some 80 per cent of all antibiotics in the US go straight into farm animals. This speeds up the race massively. It's like taking bacteria to the gym and giving them a constant work-out – and then unleashing them on the rest of us.
You can see how this process makes bacteria stronger and tougher – and at work on humans – in a startling study by Professor Barry Levy in the New England Journal of Medicine. His team went to a chicken farm where antibiotics had not been used before, and started to put the antibiotic tetracycline into their feed. Before the start of the experiment, there was no tetracycline-resistant bacteria on the farm. Within two weeks, 90 per cent of the chickens were excreting tetracycline-resistant organisms. Even more strikingly, half of all the humans living on the farm were by then excreting tetracycline-resistant bacteria too.
This process partially explains the evolution and spread of many superbugs. Only a fortnight ago, a new strain of MRSA was found in British milk that could be transmitted to human beings. To some degree this arms race is an inevitable part of nature – but our factory farms are massively artificially accelerating it. They are bringing the day when antibiotics won't work much closer.
Why? Why would factory farms automatically feed antibiotics to healthy animals, given the obvious risk? If you cram animals together, give them little room to move, and make them grow and produce far beyond the level they would in natural circumstances, they will routinely get ill – and they do. It is cheaper for their owners to simply automatically and pre-emptively drug them all, than to try to treat their illness individually, or to create an environment where sickness is not standard.
The animals in these factory farms can become reservoirs of stronger superbugs. Sometimes it spreads to us through contamination of raw meat, but more often it filters out through workers who have contact with the animals. Dutch pig farmers are 760 times more likely to be carrying pig-MRSA than the rest of the population. This story ends eventually with the death of antibiotics – and routine operations becoming deadly once more.
We always knew factory farming was a scar on our conscience, but it turns out it is also an urgent threat to our health. Of course, factory farming is not the only source of growing antibiotic resistance. Doctors have been over-prescribing them, and patients have too often not been taking their full course, enabling tougher bacteria to survive and thrive. But this is the most egregious cause.
A few years ago, it looked like the European Union had taken the lead, by banning the routine use of some types of antibiotics simply to promote the growth of animals. But research published this week by the Soil Association suggests farmers are sidestepping the real issue. The prescription of modern cephalosporins, the antibiotics which are most widely believed to promote stronger variants of MRSA in animals and humans – has quadrupled in the past decade in Britain. Why? They are advertised to farmers, who are under greater pressure than ever to get more and more out of their herds because supermarkets have ratcheted up the pressure for quick profit. Decent small farmers who want to resist these trends find themselves out of business.
The former chief medical officer Liam Donaldson says this over-prescription is so dangerous to us all it should be banned. Yet David Cameron's Government ignored the official recommendation from its own veterinary advisers to take even the much milder step of banning the advertising of antibiotics to farmers.
It might seem strange that governments all over the world are taking such a gamble with public health, in the face of the best scientific advice. But Big Agriculture has armies of lobbyists and open checkbooks, while the people trying to protect the public have only the facts and reason and truth on their side. The squandering of life-saving antibiotics is one example of a bigger trend hijacking global politics. Small groups of rich people, determined to maximize profits, are buying or bamboozling politicians into serving their interests and into ignoring the interests of the vast majority of the population. This is the trend that is making it so hard to (say) re-regulate the banks to prevent another global crash, or prevent the unraveling of the climate.
It doesn't have to be this way. The majority of the population can organize and shout louder than these self-interested juntas of profit. There are inspiring examples. In Lincolnshire, there were plans to import the first US-style mega-farm into this country by a group of tycoons who claimed their cows "do not belong in fields". But public pressure forced the Environment Agency to investigate, and the plans to be abandoned. Fighting back on issues like this works – and we need to step it up.
Otherwise, the history books – written by people more vulnerable to bacteria than you and I have ever been – will record something startling. Our demand for cheap meat turned us, in turn, into cheap meat.
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31 Comments so far
Show All"Small groups of rich people, determined to maximize profits, are buying or bamboozling politicians into serving their interests and into ignoring the interests of the vast majority of the population."
It's been amazingly efficient and profitable. Why would they or anyone ever seek to change that model? It's good for our markets and the GDP.
It's only profitable because your tax dollars, and mine, help subsidize it.
And what's so efficient about the inevitable collateral carnage within the CAFOs?
Death rates sufficiently high that poultry CAFOs are required by law to provide means and methods for 'mortality composting'.
Yes, that's sure a model worth preserving.
Back in the 1980s, I was a a meat eater. I also ate eggs and milk products. That all changed when I began to get the strangest symptoms: every morning one part of my body--a hand or eye or lip--usually, would be wildly swollen. A hand would look like a blown-up surgical glove, or my upper lip like a beak. The doctors had no idea why, and it took a layperson to suggest that as I’m allergic to sulfa, which is dispersed throughout our livestock, maybe I should look at reactions to animal products. I did, and the connection was clear. This forced me to become vegan, eating only the occasional piece of wild fish, not at all a bad thing. From there I started to learn about herbal remedies and the medicinal properties of food. I learned to cure various infections with echinacea, acidophilus, and garlic oil. Doctors, however, tell me that what I do is dangerous. Oh, we don’t know enough about the DANGERS of herbs! None of those remedies work! I reply, well, you know, or should know, plenty about the dangers of antibiotics, and pass them out to children and everyone else like candy, even prophylactically. You even give small children antibiotics when they have viruses. And how can you say my remedies don’t work when they obviously work for me? How much training have you had in alternative remedies that you can say that? They never answer.
Certainly, antibiotics have their place. I wouldn’t want major surgery without them, although as this article points out, this may not be an option in the not-so-distant future. But the medical community has decided to close its ears to alternatives for the avoidance and treatment of minor infections, loading on the antibiotics, and then fake authority over things they choose to remain entirely ignorant of.
As for the abuse of livestock and the consequent blanket of antibiotic dosing, that’s just too disgusting. What I went through was nothing compared to the dangers of antibiotics we’re seeing and will see. If people would just eat far less meat, far fewer eggs, and switch over to soy, almond or rice milk, we’d have a much healthier population by far. But that would take an educational movement that the FDA has no intention of allowing, as their primary purpose is to benefit the food and drug corporations. And all that business for cancer, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, etc. would shrivel up, not a good thing for the medical industrial complex.
Great post, Elizabeth H. But I'm guessing that you mention "soy, almond or rice milk" primarily as sources of protein? If that is the case, I just want to point out that there are plenty of other sources for vegans, including various beans and lentils. Besides, the protein requirement for adults is primarily for "maintenance" purposes to repair tissue and replace dead cells. Growing children would need somewhat more, of course. If people can get used to food items from various parts of the world, then the choices are obviously greater and the eating is more fun. Again, good post, and I completely agree with your last line!
good note elizabeth, except for the medical community paranoia and doctor bashing hint.
The public does need to beware of doctors vending prescriptions but you do not mention the consumers role in black listing docs who restrain and advise common sense. Also must note the medical community is like other commercial communities; the independent docs have lost their mantle to the tyrannical demands of the powerful healthcare industry which controls them. You dissent, they persecute. Like teachers and other labor groups, docs have to demand the right to unionize and assert their professional right. I hope this is helpful
Good post Elizabeth H. I agree with everthing you say except for one point "eating only the occasional piece of wild fish, not at all a bad thing."
Please watch the movie 'End Of The Line' and you will see that eating fish is just as destructive as eating meat from a feed lot. The oceans have been over-fished and are on the verge of death, so I cannot agree with those that state that they only eat fish because of the horrors of factory farming. When the reality is that the way fish are raised and consumed is as bad if not worse for the Earth. It just looks safer because it's so out of sight.
Farm animals are a part of our existance and are a vital part of a healthy food
system. They provide fertilizer and help keep the land healthy. There are ways that we can co-exist with them and still consume them. Not at the rate they're consumed now, but at a much smaller quantity. If the average person had to raise, feed, care for, love, and slaughter their own meat, consumption would be greatly reduced. Unfortunately the masses have been "taught" that the way it's done now is the only way to feed them.
Other than that, great post.
"Love and slaughter their own meat"? Can you actually believe these words are congruous? I guess as you say, "the masses have been 'taught' that way."
When my son was in fourth grade, his classmate did an experiment for the science fair.
She lived on a pig farm. She took 2 baby pigs, and gave one antibiotics to one, and not the other.
It was pretty amazing. The antibiotic fed piglet was visibly bigger than the other.
I think that that is why they feed them to animals. They are trying to get the animals big as fast as possible, so that they can kill them faster.
Let us not forget, where there is a yin, there is a yang.
Fewer people, on the planet, not so bad.
Fewer meat-eaters, not fewer people.
You could volunteer right now......?
I am seeing pessimistic comments like this on news message boards everywhere. It's like people WANT to die. Or want other people to die.
I have had two good friends kill themselves in the past year. They both were deeply depressed over... well, everything. Money as God is not an ethical or even survivable philosophy. If the SHIFT doesn't happen soon, we will never grow up.
Sure, after they kill 9/10th's of us, the mega-rich may have their flotillas and spaceships for awhile, but it will get very old very quickly, and the gene-pool will look like 17th century England. Endgame, no winners. Yin Yang indeed.
You volunteering to become one of the people no longer on the planet?
When you fear death, they have you by the you-know-whats
"Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to "die before you die" --- and find that there is no death."
— Eckhart Tolle
People are so reactionary. They see someone say "Less population = Good for Earth" and automatically assume it means "Hey, you parasite, go kill yourself!" Nope, they just think up the most extreme version of population control and try to pass the whole idea off as anti-human.
Hey, here's an idea: BIRTH CONTROL!
See? No one has to die! (Well, unless you're one of those uber-religious weirdos who thinks that if you take the pill or use a condom you might as well just be stabbing a baby in the face.)
Why is that never the first thing people think of when they are faced with problems exacerbated by over-population? If we had a world that wasn't so anti-woman and pro- pumping out a million babies a day (mostly so that there will be more future consumers) then we might not be in the mess we're in.
Excellent report. Not to mention the miserable life these poor animals endure.
Why is this information not made public?
Surely someone or more of our CD readers have contacts in the more ubiquitous media to get the facts out.
It HAS been made public, for those who care or have the stomach to know.
If this article doesnt want to make you become a vegetarian I dont know what will. The Black Plague could be nothing compared to what could happen if a highly contagious superbug gets out of control and cant be stopped. Only grow and eat organic food, preferably in your own backyard.
I agree with you, completely! It is why my wife and I have not eaten meat since 2000.
The picture says it all. These factory farms are Nazi death camps for animals.
People who eat this kind of food, are in a strange state of denial. When one avoids eating this kind of toxic food, it looks and smells even more repulsive.
This is the peak of the profit driven sickness care system. It's unsustainability is already appearing, with more and more cases of MRSA appearing. It's not going to be pretty when the bacteria get the upper hand again, but we're kidding ourselves if we don't think that's going to happen.
What is next? Soylent green?
If only the CAFO's had to pay the same rate for the anti-biotics as we "civilians" do.
Well, shit. Even though I'm vegan now, I STILL run the risk of all sorts of horrible health problems because OTHER PEOPLE think that animal flesh is just too tasty to quit. Ignorant hedonists will ruin us all.
excellent piece by JHari occasionally showing up on democracy now with Amy Goodman-Juan Gonzales
would add there is yet another public health element that is a parallel threat is the widespread use of antibacterial and antifungal agent Triclosan in soaps and cosmetics. This contaminant is now being traced as a human tissue residue, with unclear significance. Also showing up in soil. There is absolutely no benefit of triclosan or any anti-infective agent in sanitary products, soap alone is adequate, but can the industry be controlled ?
the use of growth hormone use in the meat and dairy industry is another topic needing urgent press attention.
Excellent article also excellent point about antibacterial soaps! All that is needed is an antiseptic soap for the extra dirties. Natural, essential oils of plants are naturally anti bacterial and cannot coexist with harmful bacteria - that is your best bet for hands and body - skin, being the largest organ of the human body.
This is also related to the lowering (1953-1995) and elimination (1996-) of price floors and supply management for feed grains and soybeans in the commodity title of the farm bill. This has assault on progressive farm policy has hardly been mentioned at progressive sites, and has usually been convoluted by the farm subsidy debate (farm subsidies do not cause the cheap feed prices, as I prove 4 ways in "Michael Pollan Rebuttal"). Progressives today generally support CAFOs by supporting cheap feed policies, unknowingly (for the best exceptions search "Brad Wilson" and "Farm Bill Primer". By making feed commodities so incredibly cheap, grassfed becomes relatively much more expensive, so unhealthy livestock practices become much more necessary economically. So party of the crisis is that food progressives mostly advocate on the wrong side of the crucial farm bill issues (historically we've had multitrillions of dollars in reductions in feed prices, and progressives call for mere subsidy reforms which do nothing practically significant to fix the cheap commodity problem).
The author of this article probably doesn't know about the issue. The key progressive organizations that know about it are the National Family Farm Coalition, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, and Food and Water Watch. (Search my name and "Farm Bill Primer" for their main writing on the subject.)
Of course, allt he holier-than-thou vegans would come out on this one. "EVERYONE EAT VEGAN, THIS IS PROOF."
When it's actually a call to eat more local, sustainable, and pasture raised. It has never been meat, eggs or dairy that was wrong, as itself. It's the way it is RAISED. I too, an omnivore, despise factory farming and do not eat this way.
I eat chicken raised on pasture and slaughtered in that yard that they've known and loved by a local woman who raises them with no soy or corn. I also eat the eggs these chickens lay. I buy goat milk from another local woman where the goats have been on pasture their whole lives. I buy beef from a farm five miles down the road, 100% grass fed.
You have to start asking where your diet comes from? Five miles away? Or imported vegan goods from across the world and divorced from your local landbase? What does your backyard support? Grain cultivation? Soybean cultivation? Are you plowing your fields for grain? My soil is very rocky and filled with clay. About all that grows is grass. So I'm now raising a goat and a few geese.
I think a lot of people tend to forget that many of us omnivores hate factory farming too, and that factory farming is the ONLY way to raise meat/dairy.
It isn't.
Why are we making such a fuzz about it? The problem will solve itself eventually..... I was an animal eater too, until I "saw the light" 20 odd years ago and realized how much suffering there was attached. But people don't want to listen, they want to keep going on eating animals and so they will find out in the end. It is a disgrace that we feed so much greens to animals good enough for 10 billion people, while there is hunger all over the world. (And we are "only" with 6. something billion!!!!
"Labels such as "Cage Free," "Free Range," "Humane Certified," "Grass Fed," "Organic," and "Local" make it seem like those who are willing to pay a higher price can enjoy eggs, dairy, and meat from small-scale "humane" farms that treat animals with compassion and respect.
But is the public being misled?"
- From http://humanemyth.org
"Deconstructing the myth of humane animal agriculture"