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Does that make any practical difference for animals meant for consumption like beef cattle, hogs, or chickens? You can give them all the antibiotics you want un
by Johnny555 7y ago
Does that make any practical difference for animals meant for consumption like beef cattle, hogs, or chickens? You can give them all the antibiotics you want until a few days before slaughter.
- vibrio 7y agoIt does. The animals will be colonized by bacteria that have "learned" to deal with all those antibiotics you gave. That resistance is easily transmitted.
- Johnny555 7y agoI understand the problem with antibiotic resistance, but telling a farmer that an animal treated by antibiotics can't enter the food supply until after treatment ends doesn't really solve the problem when it comes to animals raised as food -- the farmer can treat the animal with antibiotics for nearly all of its life, only stopping the treatment just before slaughter.
- vibrio 7y agoTotally agreed. I'm naive to much around Ag/Husbandry. If that's what farmers do, that is a concern. From a microbiology point of view, the concept that "washing out" the drug before slaughter improves anything is flawed. It will be a reservoir of smoldering antibiotic resistance as long as that practice persists.