Antibiotics

This may seem a strange topic and it is. We are continually being warned by doctors to not take as many antibiotics as we do because they decrease in effectiveness and produce strains of viruses that become increasing more difficult to combat.

But how about your cow, pig, or dog? Are they overusing antibiotics and do we hear veterinarians’ warn Bossy the cow, Borus the pig or Fido the dog to watch their antibiotic intake?

Huh?

Here is a chart from the Pew Charitable Trust showing while humans consume 8 billion pounds of antibiotics to treat illness farmers use 29.9 billion pounds of antibiotics for their animals and that figure is increasing.

The FDA is addressing this issue with some guidelines. You know what guidelines are those things you ignore if it negatively affects your short term bottom line.

Here is some things they have learned according to the Pew study:

• Of the Salmonella on ground turkey, about 78% were resistant to at least one antibiotic and half of the bacteria were resistant to three or more. These figures are up compared to 2010. 

• Nearly three-quarters of the Salmonella found on retail chicken breast were resistant to at least one antibiotic. About 12% of retail chicken breast and ground turkey samples were contaminated with Salmonella.

• Resistance to tetracycline [an antibiotic] is up among Campylobacter on retail chicken. About 95% of chicken products were contaminated with Campylobacter, and nearly half of those bacteria were resistant to tetracyclines. This reflects an increase over last year and 2002.

Do you suppose that affects our health? Just another little ray of sunshine in our bleak winter. Now as to half of our farms now have Superweeds…well, I’ll save that for another day.