How Cheap Meat Practices Beef Up Superbugs
0 views
Skip to first unread message
Jim Robertson
May 16, 2012, 12:33:06 PM5/16/12
to ARNews Two
How Cheap Meat Practices Beef Up Superbugs
... And an estimated 70 percent of antibiotics sold in the United States are given to healthy farm animals -- not to treat disease but to promote animal growth, allow animals to live closer together and decrease the amount of time it takes to raise an animal and send it to market.
Superbugs can be the unfortunate side effect of this process. When farm animals eat the antibiotics placed in their food, it exposes the bacteria that live in their gut and skin to low levels of the drug. Some of these bugs survive this low-level assault and go on to develop resistance to the antibiotics. The resistant superbugs can then spread to humans either by direct contact with farm animals or by eating contaminated meat from the animals.
Once superbugs escape the farm, they can spread their antibiotic resistance to other bacteria that also cause infections in humans. ...
Full Story: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/moms-doctors-aim-mrsa-superbugs/story?id=16352562
... And an estimated 70 percent of antibiotics sold in the United States are given to healthy farm animals -- not to treat disease but to promote animal growth, allow animals to live closer together and decrease the amount of time it takes to raise an animal and send it to market.
Superbugs can be the unfortunate side effect of this process. When farm animals eat the antibiotics placed in their food, it exposes the bacteria that live in their gut and skin to low levels of the drug. Some of these bugs survive this low-level assault and go on to develop resistance to the antibiotics. The resistant superbugs can then spread to humans either by direct contact with farm animals or by eating contaminated meat from the animals.
Once superbugs escape the farm, they can spread their antibiotic resistance to other bacteria that also cause infections in humans. ...
Full Story: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/moms-doctors-aim-mrsa-superbugs/story?id=16352562
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages