I’ve read a few articles over the last couple of days suggesting that pressure being put on farmers to control disease in their animals may end up reducing our resistance to disease.
Mega factory farming, as practiced in the USA (and Latin America and Asia) where cows “don’t belong in fields”, means that if one animal falls ill, instead of treating that one ill animal, all of them get treated. This widespread use of antibiotics – even on healthy animals – is resulting in the growth of bacteria that is resistant to antibiotics.
Apparently 40 years ago there was a report suggesting that increased use of antibiotics in farming was endangering human health. If that’s the case why are they increasingly being used?
We need to get back in touch with how our food is grown/made/farmed, stop the moves to mega factory farming (there was a successful campaign [for now] against a proposal in Lincolnshire earlier this year), reduce the pressure on farmers to “conform”, encourage them to go organic and, introduce stricter controls on the use of antibiotics along the lines of those used in Scandinavian countries.
Read More: the ecologist, reckless practices, cheap meet, MRSA and greed, biological menace
