Article: Arsenic in Our Chicken? - NYTimes.com

[Adam A. Altman]

 this is another article about food supply being really messed up. while we are all generally familiar with this issue, the comprehensive list of chemicals fed to chickens is just staggering.  a small excerpt, and the reasons why is below. There's more in the article. Happy reading. And happy eating.

Arsenic in Our Chicken? - NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/05/opinion/kristof-arsenic-in-our-chicken.html?_r=1

Poultry-growing literature has recommended Benadryl to reduce anxiety among chickens, apparently because stressed chickens have tougher meat and grow more slowly. Tylenol and Prozac presumably serve the same purpose.

Researchers found that most feather-meal samples contained caffeine. It turns out that chickens are sometimes fed coffee pulp and green tea powder to keep them awake so that they can spend more time eating. (Is that why they need the Benadryl, to calm them down?)

(via Instapaper)

[Lindsay Hong]

I just had the scariest lecture on antibiotic resistance, which is being driven by the CRAZY quantity of antibiotics used to promote growth in animals we eat. About 13 million kgs of antibiotics are used for non-therpeutic purposes in these animals.

What’s further exacerbating the problem is that there are no incentives to develop new antibiotics. For some diseases, we’re starting to see incidence and death rates increase to what they were before antibiotics were developed.

There’s a few papers and books I want to read on the issue. I’ll send summaries after I’ve finished them.

[Adam Altman]

If the old ones stop working, and people start getting sick, won't that be a market incentive to develop new ones?  Not presuming I know better, rather trying to probe on the dynamics of how it all works.

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[Lindsay Hong]

Great question! One would think. However, drug companies make more money when they develop drugs for chronic diseases (i.e., drugs that people have to take multiple times a day/week for the rest of their lives, or for a long period of time). Antibiotics just cure people after one or a few doses.

The ROI on developing an antibiotic is something like negative $50 billion, whereas the ROI for chronic disease drugs is something like positive $116 billion. There are two reasons that are not very obvious when thinking about the issue:

1. We've already developed antibiotics for the "low hanging fruit." At this point, finding new and effective antibiotics requires A LOT of time and money.
2. The process by which antibiotics are approved impedes development. It has to do with the type of clinical trial that must be conducted and the requirement of equipoise (i.e., a state of genuine uncertainty).

Bottom line is that from the pharmaceutical perspective, there's no money in curing people or keeping them healthy.

[Adam Altman]

that sucks and great explanation.

[Lindsay Hong]

Super interesting fact: 

Bacteria can adapt super fast because they are able to share DNA across PHYLA. If we were able to do that, we could share DNA with blue whales, sea squirts, and other very non-human-like animals. Nuts, right?