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Big meat can’t quit antibiotics

rpaddock 4y ago
Fluoroquinolone Antibiotics such as Cipro are often given to animals because they are cheap. They are in no way at all safe for people or animals. Sadly as the parent article shows, the FDA doesn't care. The book: "Taking On Big Pharma: Dr. Charles Bennett's Battle" was released this week. I was asked to go with Dr Bennett to speak to members of Congress about the dangers of Fluoroquinolone Antibiotics. As these were a significant contributor to my late wife's suicide. Alas that was right as the world changed at the start of the pandemic and derailed those plans. I have the many FDA warning for Fluoroquinolone Antibiotics here: https://www.kpaddock.com/fq https://www.kpaddock.com/fq People just don't expect side effects like permanent psychoses to come from their antibiotics, as one of the most recent FDA warnings documents. Dr Bennetts new book: https://www.amazon.com/Taking-Big-Pharma-Bennetts-Childrens/dp/1510775412/ref=sr_1_1 https://www.amazon.com/Taking-Big-Pharma-Bennetts-Childrens/... His related interview: https://live.childrenshealthdefense.org/chd-tv/shows/doctors-and-scientists-with-brian-hooker-phd/taking-on-big-pharma--dr-charles-bennetts-battle/ https://live.childrenshealthdefense.org/chd-tv/shows/doctors...
- MonkeyClub 4y ago
  My condolences for your loss... And thank you for the important information!
- notafraudster 4y ago
  I'm sorry you lost your wife. My wife had a near-death medical experience last year (a stroke, completely unrelated) and I was never as emotionally empty and destroyed as I was during the ten minutes I thought I lost her and subsequent days worrying about her recovery. You linked an interview with Childrens' Health Defense, an organization whose primary purpose is to argue, categorically, that all vaccinations are dangerous and do not work. They are the largest such organization and their activism has been directly responsible for the growth in resistance to MMR vaccination and later to COVID-19 vaccination. This does not mean that the point about a class of antibiotics is incorrect, and I understand that there's a possibility of "strange bedfellows" here because of the potential agreement on the matter of, uh, "big pharma". As I see it, one possibility is that you linked the CHD article not knowing this. Another possibility is that you linked the CHD article knowing this, but figuring just because they're wrong about vaccines doesn't tarnish them on this issue. Another possibility is that you generally agree with their position on vaccines. I'm not here to judge or change your mind, I'm just telling you that I don't have any prior view about whatever fluoroquinolone antibiotics are. I read the first half of your post wanting to do more investigation. Because of the CHD link inclusion, I am now predisposed not to believe this is a real issue. I am a non-medical social scientist but I have spent a lot of the COVID period publishing work about vaccination. Anti-vaxx stuff is a complete deal-breaker for me. And if your reason for posting was to persuade an audience, I think that's the opposite of what you want.
  - gjsman-1000 4y ago
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  - camccar 4y ago
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  - wolfprogramming 4y ago
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  - unethical_ban 4y ago
    I agree that when people cite bad sources, it harm's their argument. Yes, dead commenters, the messenger matters. I'll also state I think deleting vaccine skeptics does more harm on HN than good. Let their ignorance be argued, lest they get a persecution complex and dig in more deeply. Only delete, in my opinion, those that cite disinformation or misinformation.
    - magicalist 4y ago
      > Let their ignorance be argued eh, "Disprove [the situation you just said was emotionally gutting] wasn't caused by [nonsense I can write down in 5 seconds but will take 2+ orders of magnitude to respond to]" is pretty classic sealioning/asymmetric trolling. Maybe if they put up a claim with evidence, otherwise it's just low-effort shit posting and not worth much more than a downvote.
  - rpaddock 4y ago
    The interview is where it is, which I have no control over. I would have posted Dr. B's interview where ever it was as it is related to the Big Pharma book release. He is considered one of the worlds experts on drug adverse advents. That there are adverse advents with multiple (All?) Big Pharma products is also something I have no control over. I supplied a link to my late wife's page where all the FDA warnings are linked to directly. The other links can be ignored if that is your desire.
  - Traubenfuchs 4y ago
- culi 4y ago
  Interesting. What is the mechanism of action that could be causing this? Are other antibiotics safer in this regard? What are the most commonly used antibiotics? Extremely sorry for your loss
  - rpaddock 4y ago
    Thank you. No one really knows what causes these issues. Any other antibiotic is safer. These should have been removed from the market a long time ago. Just read the other comments in this tread for examples.
  - Traubenfuchs 4y ago
    > What is the mechanism of action that could be causing this? It is barely understood. Fluoroquinolones are known to cause: Mineral and metal chelation, permanent DNA damage, permanently changed unhealthy epigenetic state changes, increased oxidative stress, permanent damage to mitochondrial DNA. > Are other antibiotics safer in this regard? Besides aminoglycosides like gentamicin which is now liberally used topically because internal usage causes permanent hearing loss, most antibiotics in use generally do not carry a notable risk of lifelong disability. > What are the most commonly used antibiotics? That very much depends on the infection being treated, but let me just guarantee you that there would almost always be an antibiotic available that is a safer alternative to fluoroquinolones. Unfortunately, those antibiotics are generally strictly controlled reserve antibiotics you get IV in a hospital, which you would only get to avoid death or other serious consequences, and just won't get for that treatment resistant gonorrhea, where fluoroquinolones can already indeed be the only freely available alternative. Then there are also substances that just aren't available everywhere, like streptogramins which in Europe you can probably only get in France.
- wizee 4y ago
  Speaking of Fluoroquinolones and Cipro (Ciprofloxacin) specifically, I personally had bad experiences with it causing tendon damage and severe back pain, though fortunately the damage healed and the back pain cleared within a couple days after stopping my Cipro course early and switching to a different antibiotic.
- simonebrunozzi 4y ago
  > As these were a significant contributor to my late wife's suicide. I can't even imagine how hard it is for you. I am sorry for your loss.
- dml2135 4y ago
  I personally experienced the negative affects of fluoroquinolone as well. I did a full course of Cipro and experienced horrible back pain, which was minimized by my doctor until he put me on Levaquin a few weeks later and I had to stop after a few days because the pain was so bad. Six years later I still have some lingering back pain from that incident, seems like it did at least some permanent damage. It was incredibly hard to deal with, on top of the chronic infection causing me to take the antibiotics in the first place. The most frustrating thing was the seeming indifference I got from many (not all) of the doctors I saw about it. Condolences for your loss, and my deepest sympathies.
  - aqme28 4y ago
    Ugh Levaquin. One of the well-known side effects is a spontaneous Achilles tendon rupture. Horrifying, and I hated taking it.
    - unethical_ban 4y ago
      That's a terrifying side effect.
      - Traubenfuchs 4y ago
        Don‘t forget about the chronic neuropathy! Some people have hands and feet that will burn and sting until their death. I had to take moxifloxacin and ciprofloxacin at two different times in my life. Besides the achilles, feet and hand tendon pain, both times I would have severe stinging pain in my scalp for months after taking them. Blessed as I am it went away again.
- devwastaken 4y ago
  The FDA warnings read like any other medication. This article does not point out why this is specifically worse, or how "rare" of an occurrence it is is or isn't. I can't know from this article wether the cause is this antibiotic.
- antiatheist 4y ago
  https://www.amr.gov.au/about-amr/amr-australia/amr-and-animal-health-australia https://www.amr.gov.au/about-amr/amr-australia/amr-and-anima...
falcolas 4y ago
I'm afraid this earns a "well, duh" from me. For a minimal cost to ranches, they can increase both their output and the reliability of that output. And the externalized costs? The ranches aren't held accountable for those, so they may as well not exist. And you can bet those ranches will fight tooth and nail against being held accountable; it is, after all, the most "logical" way to spend their resources to protect their revenue. Imagine the shareholder response if the profits were to drop significantly, and permanently. It's simply how we've trained corporations to behave.
- snarf21 4y ago
  This our biggest problem in the US, externalities are never priced in. Always easier to pay fines for pennies or to declare bankruptcy and start again.
  - willnonya 4y ago
    By externalities you seem to mean the choices that other people make. unless the choice is to not biy their product how or why woukd these get factored in? how would you do so and retain a nominally free society? How would you justify this being our biggest problem?
    - lovich 4y ago
      Nah man, externalities here means externalities. In this specific instance the meat producing corporations are not paying for the increased risk of producing antibiotic resistant pathogens, which is a cost the rest of the planet has to bear. Price them in the same way any insurance model prices in risk. > how would you do so and retain a nominally free society? Nominally free doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want. Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose, as the saying goes. If you want to take actions that affect everyone negatively then you should be paying for that. Inversely there are also positive externalities and we should probably subsidize/pay groups who produce those
    - biorach 4y ago
      That's not what externalities means. Google "pricing in externalities"
nszceta 4y ago
Do these antibiotics and their metabolites stay in the meat post slaughter and make their way into the food supply?
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  Yes, which is why giving antibiotics to livestock that are going for slaughter is illegal pretty much everywhere except the US. If you actually need to dose some to treat an illness, there are protocols to follow to ensure that they're clean before they go off to market.
  - willnonya 4y ago
    That's not even based in reality. If you wait until after animals are sick to treat then depending on what disease it is you've lost all or most of a herd due to the way existing regulations require them to be handled.
    - biorach 4y ago
      Based on reality...? Here in the EU we have managed not to loose most of our herds.
    - nszceta 4y ago
      Do you see any problems with prophylactically dosing antibiotics yourself? Anything?
      - NegativeK 4y ago
        Human living conditions are nowhere near those of livestock. If we want to drop antibiotics, we're going to end up with significantly increased prices of meat due to increased land usage requirements. This would be ecologically good, but socially disastrous.
        nszceta 4y ago
        Central Europeans eat a lot of meat and somehow they manage to keep prices under control without slamming animals with antibiotics prophylactically. Land and regulatory compliance costs are much higher than in the US too.
Gordonjcp 4y ago
And yet this only happens in the US.
- elil17 4y ago
  EU did it until last year, when they banned it. The US should follow their lead.
  - Tor3 4y ago
    Some countries in Europe (e.g. the Nordic countries) banned the practice a decade or more ago already. What's new is that EU as a whole bans it. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/antibiotic-use-in-livestock-in-europe https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/antibiotic-use-in-livesto...
  - biorach 4y ago
    My understanding is that even before the EU ban it was much less common in the EU than in the US because most EU countries regulate antibiotic use in agriculture.
    - Beltalowda 4y ago
      Also there's less need for it in the first place as welfare conditions are usually better. Who could have expected that livestock that's not kept unhealthy conditions tends to be healthier.
      - kwhitefoot 4y ago
        Except in Denmark where they use, or perhaps used to use, vast quantities of antibiotics intensive pig rearing.
        Beltalowda 4y ago
        No doubt; same in Netherlands (more pigs than people in the country). But there's been improvement over the last 20 years on the animal welfare front, at least in the Netherlands and presumably Denmark too. And routine administration of antibiotics is banned everywhere in the EU now, AFAIK without too many exceptions.
milliams 4y ago
When I see a graph like [1] with the y-axis not zeroed I stop reading. Furthermore, the assertion that it "ticked back up" is not really supported by that graph any more than saying "it ticked back up and then it ticked down again" [1] https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24341618/KmRHP_antibiotic_sales_for_livestock_plummeted_then_ticked_back_up__1_.png https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24341618/K...
- sonofhans 4y ago
  Yes, that's a deceptive graph, very likely intentionally deceptive in order to reinforce the clickbait headline.
- runarberg 4y ago
  I agree it is totally unnecessary in this case, but sometimes truncating the y-axis serves a purpose. Many times it is for stylistic reasons, but also if the trend is more interesting then the scale, e.g. most stock charts truncate the y-axis because people don’t really care how much a stock has dropped relative to the value, but are more interested in the overall trend in the time period and the specific times when the trend reversed (I think, I don’t trade in stocks). It is unnecessary to do that in this case because the scale isn’t that vast and you can easily see the trend on an absolute scale. However, this graph serves the same purpose as—I gather—stock charts do. They are interested in what happened while the trend was downwards, and the specific time at when the trend stopped (or at least halted).
- jweir 4y ago
  The article is terrible. At the very least break down the use by animal and mass. Never mind cows are not raised like pigs which are not raised like chickens. To lump them all together is silly and insulting.
  - callalex 4y ago
    But they don’t lump them together, and they acknowledge your concern specifically.
willnonya 4y ago
"Big meat can't quit antibiotics" Nor should they. The impact would be more far reaching than what's being discussed in the article.
- biorach 4y ago
  No one is calling for a total ban on antibiotic use. They're calling for a ban on routine mass administration, along the lines of what the EU has done. There are very compelling public health reasons for this.
- xsmasher 4y ago
  They could quit using antibiotics on animals that are not sick; quit using them just to make animals grow faster. But that would hurt their bottom line, so they won't do it unless regulated to do so.
benj111 4y ago
Can't or won't. The EU manages fine without so much antibiotics.
LatteLazy 4y ago
I feel like we're living through the death of democracy because a list of issues (from gerrymandering to demographics) mean that small groups wield oversized power. Agriculture is <6% of the US economy and only about 10% of the US workforce is related to it. Yet whole federal elections are decided based on candidates comments about corn and it receives huge pointless subsidies and is very badly under regulated. The same is true here in the UK. The same is true of other groups too. A core political issue in the 2020s will be how to deal with tiny groups holding oversized political power as we cannot afford to just keep paying them off (or worse, letting them "wag the dog" as they did with Brexit) anymore.
- sonthonax 4y ago
  Agriculture may be a small constituency, but you’d rather the food supply continues to flow.
  - LatteLazy 4y ago
    No one is proposing a famine. Just that, maybe, we should have some safety standards?
- bannedbybros 4y ago
  [dead]
- nikanj 4y ago
  Who’s ”we”? The poor people don’t have any power, and the rich people don’t want to stop buying large subsidies with small campaign donations
- AtlasBarfed 4y ago
  It's also because of the Iowa caucuses. Why is that continued to wield such outlandish control of the Presidential Election Process?
m000 4y ago
> Big meat can’t quit antibiotics But you can quit big meat.
- detroitcoder 4y ago
  It is my understanding that you quitting big meat, doesn't affect your risk. If you are exposed to a new drug resistant pathogen that was the result of anti-biotics in cattle, chicken, pork, etc, it doesn't matter if you even eat meat. That said am I interpreting this right? How much of a risk does the use of antibiotics in meat present to a vegetarian?
  - barbazoo 4y ago
    > How much of a risk does the use of antibiotics in meat present to a vegetarian? Whatever the exact value, it's most likely much lower. At least you're not ingesting whatever is left in the meat which, by reading some of the responses here, seem to come with significant risk.
  - biorach 4y ago
    long-term yes, you're right - everyone is at risk due to over-use of antibiotics
  - m000 4y ago
    I think quitting big meat is more about voting with your wallet, than directly reducing your risk from their antibiotics abuse.
- NovaVeles 4y ago
  It is one of the easiest things to do that has a sizeable impact on the world.
- ornornor 4y ago
  You can also quit meat entirely.
no_wizard 4y ago
If we follow the EU lead on this and it does take, I expect in short order the US government to pass some Farm aid bill that further passes the cost on to taxpayers, and for enforcement to be haphazard for ~decade or more. We can't regulate anything correctly in the US, it seems. Only recently have I ever seen, in my entire adult life, the FTC have any real teeth, and I doubt it'll last
- eppp 4y ago
  You will pay for it in taxes or at the meat counter. You are going to pay either way and likely both.
  - no_wizard 4y ago
    Thats my point in not so many words (typical American fashion!). We'll likely pay for both while the businesses don't actually have to bear any real due to subsidies but they won't get passed on to the consumer, they'll just capture the profits
  - callalex 4y ago
    This assumes that everyone has to purchase meat. The reality is that nobody has to purchase meat.
  - culi 4y ago
    The government is already heavily subsidizing our costs here. Agriculture is one of the most heavily subsidized industries
- dylan604 4y ago
  >in my entire adult life, the FTC have any real teeth, and I doubt it'll last It's one of those situations where the people involved are so over powered by those they are meant to govern/regulate, that there's little chance of them being anything but toothless. The only time they seemingly act is when the acts are so large and publicly visible, that the only way to save any face is to publicly react. For the things that slide under the public's radar, they don't have resources for it and just let it go. At least, that's how it appears to me.
timeon 4y ago
Still waiting for antibiotics-resistant bacteria pandemics.
- HarryHirsch 4y ago
  Tuberculosis? Gonorhoea? MRSA in hospitals?
  - vibrio 4y ago
    it is here, and as it grows, much of the pain of drug resistance won't be chaos and screaming in the streets. It won't happen all at once. It will increasingly impact people getting routine procedures, or otherwise minor injuries. Someone who got a wisdom tooth removed or a a deep cut stitched up may find it doesn't heal, and there is no longer a magic pill available to clear an infection. It has been a challenging economic problem. There are poor/complicated incentives for R&D or venture investment into this area.
    - MandieD 4y ago
      Childbirth will once again be the most dangerous thing an average woman does, when a Caesarean becomes far too risky for any but the most dire cases and tears that have to be sewn up will often lead to childbed fever again.
      - vibrio 4y ago
        100%. As someone who has seen a ”normal, orderly” childbirth, I’m not sure it’s not already the most dangerous thing an average woman does.
- mnw21cam 4y ago
  Sibling comments point out some pretty serious conditions that have been caused by antibiotic resistance. However, antibiotic resistance is more likely to cause isolated problems than pandemics. We haven't had antibiotics for very long, and most of the pandemics before we had them were viral, not bacterial. However, before we had antibiotics, we had the problem that cuts, scratches, surgery, and similar could get infected, and then you would lose a limb or likely die. We are slowly returning to that state. We live with a huge amount of bacteria around us, and in our guts. Our skin generally protects us from them very well, but those same bacteria that are harmless outside the body can kill when inside the body. Antibiotics not only improved survival rates from silly trivial injuries. They enabled a whole world of surgical interventions, because after surgery you can just give antibiotics to kill off any inadvertent infection you may have introduced. (Yes, sterile operating conditions help too.)
alexfromapex 4y ago
Common sense would suggest to use probiotics instead because, like AI, they adapt and overcome with the same genetic variations these pathogens use to mutate and create their offensive capabilities. Bacteria are advanced biological machines that evolve so it does not make sense to fight them with static defense mechanisms.
- softfalcon 4y ago
  Yeah, but that’s more expensive. Farming corps aren’t going to just accept that and open their wallets. Profit is everything for them.
- culi 4y ago
  antibiotics aren't just used to treat disease. They're specifically used because they kill probiotics. Those probiotics help ungulates like digest food matter better. Without them, they tend to store that food as fat instead of using it for more useful (from the cow's perspective) things like building muscle It's the same as the link in humans between obesity and gut microbiome dysbiosis
Synaesthesia 4y ago
For a slightly higher cost we can rear animals like cattle and chicken humanely and produce better quality eggs, beef etc. I don't understand this factory farm model.
- adh636 4y ago
  > For a slightly higher cost... > I don't understand this factory farm model Seems to me like you understand it just fine. Or maybe you are underestimating the cost difference or people's ability/willingness to spend more on these items.
- AtlasBarfed 4y ago
  IMO the only solution to the big "meat problem" be it CO2, land use, antibiotics resistance, ethics of slaughtering animals, treatment, is probably cultured meat. More government sponsored investment is definitely needed. The CO2 externality alone of cattle is a significant portion of humanity's CO2 emissions, something like 15%. The land use for meat production between feed and grazing is very large as well, google says 33% of farmland is dedicated to animal feed production. That's a huge amount of land consuming water resources, steadily losing topsoil, and removal of natural habitats and potential carbon sinks. Grazing is 35% of US land. Again, just a huge amount of land that is denied natural habitats.
  - cbrozefsky 4y ago
    You don't fix industrial food systems with more industrial food systems. It's the industrial scale and the drive of capitalism to externalize costs and risks, and aggregate profits that is the problem. I would prefer a traditional vegetarian diet to a "cultured meat" diet. I don't want industrial food poducts in my body.
    - pookha 4y ago
      At one point in my life I was an avowed socialist. It look years for me to see through the bullshit to understand that "Capitalism" is really just negotiated (unplanned) order and sometimes that order is high-jacked by moron's. In the case of food production in the US the USDA is severely restricting the ability for small to medium sized operations to survive in the market and have tipped the scales in favor of giant multi-national corporations. those company's can have the on-site inspection overhead. A small business cannot. Thus they cannot sell their product across state lines. And so you wind up with aggregated industrial food systems.
andrewmatte 4y ago
I am not a doctor - I just write code... I remember being up in arms about weird stuff in my food when I first heard about it but now I think about the wellbeing of the animals while they're alive and shit, man, if I were sick I'd want antibiotics too. When is it excessive? Is it because they're all so close together in the factory "farm"? What do the veterinarians say about this?
- toiletfuneral 4y ago
  [dead]
- nervousvarun 4y ago
  It's not given to sick animals, it's constantly given to all livestock because it's cheap and it's seen as a sort of "preventative maintenance". Which is bad for all kinds of reasons 1) a lot of it makes it into your meals 2) it reduces the efficacy of antibiotics by constantly exposing it to bacteria (allowing them to eventually become resistant). Probably other reasons it's bad as well (I'm also not a doctor and just write code).
  - vjerancrnjak 4y ago
    Giving antibiotics to animals also makes them grow bigger. It's billions of Petri dishes. It's a white swan in the making. It's really a shame that now humans are not given antibiotics to combat antibiotic resistance, when humans do not even consume most of the antibiotics produced.
    - kube-system 4y ago
      Not all antibiotics and diseases are the same. It still makes sense to not overprescribe powerful antibiotics that humans use for human diseases. Even if agriculture is recklessly using cheap antibiotics in animals.
  - culi 4y ago
    you forgot one of the main reasons it's actually given. It completely breaks down their gut microbiome causing them to gain wait much much quicker
hammock 4y ago
I hear about antibiotics in meat constantly, but all of the biggest meat suppliers I know don't use them. For example, Perdue and Tyson both don't raise chicken with antibiotics. So where are antibiotics being used? Edit: why is this downvoted?
- hotdogrelish 4y ago
  I think that this is sometimes misleading marketing-speak. For example, Perdue says, "All of the animals for our branded products are raised in no-antibiotics-ever programs"; as a big company, surely this leaves enough vagueness for them to raise and sell animals with antibiotics under other brands/products. Since it's a private company, consumers can't know really what percentage of animals fall under one category or the other. https://corporate.perduefarms.com/news/statements/antibiotics-position-statement/ https://corporate.perduefarms.com/news/statements/antibiotic... Though it is interesting that such a big company would move towards that direction at all.
- mokash 4y ago
  suggest you read the article. The sea change in chicken production demonstrated it was possible to quickly scale down antibiotics in farming, but it didn’t do much to reduce overall use, as the chicken industry only used 6 percent of antibiotics in agriculture in 2016. And the momentum didn’t spread to other parts of the meat business, like beef and pork, which together account for over 80 percent of medically important antibiotics fed to farmed animals.
paxys 4y ago
A significant chunk of people in this country would give up (or at least wayyy reduce) meat consumption if they toured an average factory farm. Opening up this industry for public scrutiny would be a great first step, but many states now have laws banning people from even photographing them.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  May I go into your house and start taking photos?
  - paxys 4y ago
    May I take pictures of abuse at my workplace and share it with people without going to jail?
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
      Up front- I'm all for opening these "farms" up to more public scrutiny but I'm not sure sneaky activists with cameras is the answer. The USDA should do a better job and Congress could pass more animal welfare guidelines. The problem is that factory farming doesn't harm people and it keeps meat cheap. Expensive meat hurts poor people and minorities the most. It's a disturbing and tough issue.
      - xrd 4y ago
        Isn't the point that they aren't and that the Congress is in the pocket of the meat industry? Saying that they should do something seems like a cop out.
        2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
        I don't think they're in the pocket of the meat industry. As I've said- the meat industry doesn't harm actual humans and regulating it would raise prices for actual humans.
  - 4y ago
icf80 4y ago
next step in human evolution, just give up meat
cbrozefsky 4y ago
I encourage people to look for alternative sources for their meat, for all food, really. Local food systems get you a better product, and nowadays they can also be quite cheaper with all of the profit taking and fuel/energy cost driven inflation in the industrial food supply chain. We are blessed to be in Vermont, which has strong local food systems. We can get nearly all our produce and meat from local farms. We have been purchasing grass fed, pastured beef from Squier Family Farm, in Wallingford VT for years. We can get lamb and pork from the Bur-Ger family farm or any of a half dozen other families that show up at the local farmers market or sell in the coop. We recently had some Omaha steaks, claiming to be grass fed, shipped to us by a family member. They absolutely sucked in comparison. I have had Butcher Box steaks that were comparable, but also much more expensive, and way more material in packaging. For produce, we have a half dozen farms to choose from. It means eating more seasonally, but the quality of the veg is just so much greater. Now you can see this as privilege, but it's also the result of hundreds of neighbors making the conscious decision to support their local food system. While everyone was complaining about food price increases, the local food systems were WAY more stable in their pricing, and we even saw the price of grass fed ground beef drop around here. It requires more thought and planning, but it really pays off, IMO.
- pacaro 4y ago
  I think that you correctly identify this as a privilege. This points to another deeper problem that drives this. Americans expect to be able to eat meat, even when eating cheap food. Historically the food of poverty has either not included meat, or has used less desirable parts of the animal. If meat production was all done humanely, then a large section of society wouldn't be able to afford to eat meat, or not often. The subsidies, both explicit and implicit, in the meat industry in the US helps disguise income inequality
  - cbrozefsky 4y ago
    I hear you, but I also think that something must be said for the fact that I am getting all the meat I want, at prices that are competitive with and in many cases cheaper than the heavily subsidized industrial farms, but I am doing it with a family that gets none of those subsidies, and processed at a butcher in my county that doesn't get those subsidies either. This could not scale to feed my old neighborhood in Chicago, for example. In that place, sourcing this way would be so much more expensive. I pay other prices for living in a very small city in the mountains, but this is a perk. I guess I just want to caution us from applying the usual "privilege" critiques and pretending like only super-scalar universal solutions are worth considering. I agree with the whole of your comment. Subsidies of industrial food systems shape our collective diets. My diet includes bulk purchased lentils and chickpeas, rice, home-ground wheat and other very cheap staples that are the majority of my calories. We're eating lentils, beans, rice, making our own bread, and the meat is in about 1/4 our meals. I feel like we eat very well, perhaps better than I have in my whole life if I measure it by health and ethics. I spent years in Chicago where my corner bar had a Michelin star, and there were dozens of equally good places and man did I enjoy my privilege of being a well paid single remote working hacker there.
jdfedgon 4y ago
Another excellent overview of the wider problem that's behind the usage of antibiotics in that scale can be found in the Meat Atlas, published by Heinrich Böll Foundation. https://eu.boell.org/sites/default/files/2021-09/MeatAtlas2021_final_web.pdf https://eu.boell.org/sites/default/files/2021-09/MeatAtlas20... It delivers an excellent compilation of the issues at play that will keep the problem going. As long as there's no change in policies, consumer behavior and/or some mad disease that brings down the meat industry, it's going to keep continued.
deleted 4y ago
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extasia 4y ago
My big meat needed antibiotics after I hit it raw :')
refurb 4y ago
The article is a bit wonky. The FDA banned the use of human antibiotics for any other purpose than treating disease in 2017. You can’t get away with not using antibiotics in livestock any more than you can do away with them in humans. And using non-human approved antibiotics on livestock won’t increase resistance because they aren’t the same drugs. And as for concerns about antibiotics in meat, there is a required “wash out” period when animals are treated. Exposure to humans consuming meat is minuscule. And meat is routinely tested on a random basis. Not to say reducing antibiotic use isn’t an important goal, but the article just brushes off the 42% reduction in use in 2017. Great progress has been made.
mikrotikker 4y ago
If its not clear to you that the FDA was captured by big business years ago, I dunno how to help you. Get off the Facebook and tiktok. Forget homophobia and racism, your country is being stolen out from under you.

Fluoroquinolone Antibiotics such as Cipro are often given to animals because they are cheap. They are in no way at all safe for people or animals. Sadly as the parent article shows, the FDA doesn't care. The book: "Taking On Big Pharma: Dr. Charles Bennett's Battle" was released this week. I was asked to go with Dr Bennett to speak to members of Congress about the dangers of Fluoroquinolone Antibiotics. As these were a significant contributor to my late wife's suicide. Alas that was right as the world changed at the start of the pandemic and derailed those plans. I have the many FDA warning for Fluoroquinolone Antibiotics here: https://www.kpaddock.com/fq https://www.kpaddock.com/fq People just don't expect side effects like permanent psychoses to come from their antibiotics, as one of the most recent FDA warnings documents. Dr Bennetts new book: https://www.amazon.com/Taking-Big-Pharma-Bennetts-Childrens/dp/1510775412/ref=sr_1_1 https://www.amazon.com/Taking-Big-Pharma-Bennetts-Childrens/... His related interview: https://live.childrenshealthdefense.org/chd-tv/shows/doctors-and-scientists-with-brian-hooker-phd/taking-on-big-pharma--dr-charles-bennetts-battle/ https://live.childrenshealthdefense.org/chd-tv/shows/doctors...

MonkeyClub 4y ago
My condolences for your loss... And thank you for the important information!
notafraudster 4y ago
I'm sorry you lost your wife. My wife had a near-death medical experience last year (a stroke, completely unrelated) and I was never as emotionally empty and destroyed as I was during the ten minutes I thought I lost her and subsequent days worrying about her recovery. You linked an interview with Childrens' Health Defense, an organization whose primary purpose is to argue, categorically, that all vaccinations are dangerous and do not work. They are the largest such organization and their activism has been directly responsible for the growth in resistance to MMR vaccination and later to COVID-19 vaccination. This does not mean that the point about a class of antibiotics is incorrect, and I understand that there's a possibility of "strange bedfellows" here because of the potential agreement on the matter of, uh, "big pharma". As I see it, one possibility is that you linked the CHD article not knowing this. Another possibility is that you linked the CHD article knowing this, but figuring just because they're wrong about vaccines doesn't tarnish them on this issue. Another possibility is that you generally agree with their position on vaccines. I'm not here to judge or change your mind, I'm just telling you that I don't have any prior view about whatever fluoroquinolone antibiotics are. I read the first half of your post wanting to do more investigation. Because of the CHD link inclusion, I am now predisposed not to believe this is a real issue. I am a non-medical social scientist but I have spent a lot of the COVID period publishing work about vaccination. Anti-vaxx stuff is a complete deal-breaker for me. And if your reason for posting was to persuade an audience, I think that's the opposite of what you want.
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
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- camccar 4y ago
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- wolfprogramming 4y ago
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- unethical_ban 4y ago
  I agree that when people cite bad sources, it harm's their argument. Yes, dead commenters, the messenger matters. I'll also state I think deleting vaccine skeptics does more harm on HN than good. Let their ignorance be argued, lest they get a persecution complex and dig in more deeply. Only delete, in my opinion, those that cite disinformation or misinformation.
  - magicalist 4y ago
    > Let their ignorance be argued eh, "Disprove [the situation you just said was emotionally gutting] wasn't caused by [nonsense I can write down in 5 seconds but will take 2+ orders of magnitude to respond to]" is pretty classic sealioning/asymmetric trolling. Maybe if they put up a claim with evidence, otherwise it's just low-effort shit posting and not worth much more than a downvote.
- rpaddock 4y ago
  The interview is where it is, which I have no control over. I would have posted Dr. B's interview where ever it was as it is related to the Big Pharma book release. He is considered one of the worlds experts on drug adverse advents. That there are adverse advents with multiple (All?) Big Pharma products is also something I have no control over. I supplied a link to my late wife's page where all the FDA warnings are linked to directly. The other links can be ignored if that is your desire.
- Traubenfuchs 4y ago
culi 4y ago
Interesting. What is the mechanism of action that could be causing this? Are other antibiotics safer in this regard? What are the most commonly used antibiotics? Extremely sorry for your loss
- rpaddock 4y ago
  Thank you. No one really knows what causes these issues. Any other antibiotic is safer. These should have been removed from the market a long time ago. Just read the other comments in this tread for examples.
- Traubenfuchs 4y ago
  > What is the mechanism of action that could be causing this? It is barely understood. Fluoroquinolones are known to cause: Mineral and metal chelation, permanent DNA damage, permanently changed unhealthy epigenetic state changes, increased oxidative stress, permanent damage to mitochondrial DNA. > Are other antibiotics safer in this regard? Besides aminoglycosides like gentamicin which is now liberally used topically because internal usage causes permanent hearing loss, most antibiotics in use generally do not carry a notable risk of lifelong disability. > What are the most commonly used antibiotics? That very much depends on the infection being treated, but let me just guarantee you that there would almost always be an antibiotic available that is a safer alternative to fluoroquinolones. Unfortunately, those antibiotics are generally strictly controlled reserve antibiotics you get IV in a hospital, which you would only get to avoid death or other serious consequences, and just won't get for that treatment resistant gonorrhea, where fluoroquinolones can already indeed be the only freely available alternative. Then there are also substances that just aren't available everywhere, like streptogramins which in Europe you can probably only get in France.
wizee 4y ago
Speaking of Fluoroquinolones and Cipro (Ciprofloxacin) specifically, I personally had bad experiences with it causing tendon damage and severe back pain, though fortunately the damage healed and the back pain cleared within a couple days after stopping my Cipro course early and switching to a different antibiotic.
simonebrunozzi 4y ago
> As these were a significant contributor to my late wife's suicide. I can't even imagine how hard it is for you. I am sorry for your loss.
dml2135 4y ago
I personally experienced the negative affects of fluoroquinolone as well. I did a full course of Cipro and experienced horrible back pain, which was minimized by my doctor until he put me on Levaquin a few weeks later and I had to stop after a few days because the pain was so bad. Six years later I still have some lingering back pain from that incident, seems like it did at least some permanent damage. It was incredibly hard to deal with, on top of the chronic infection causing me to take the antibiotics in the first place. The most frustrating thing was the seeming indifference I got from many (not all) of the doctors I saw about it. Condolences for your loss, and my deepest sympathies.
- aqme28 4y ago
  Ugh Levaquin. One of the well-known side effects is a spontaneous Achilles tendon rupture. Horrifying, and I hated taking it.
  - unethical_ban 4y ago
    That's a terrifying side effect.
    - Traubenfuchs 4y ago
      Don‘t forget about the chronic neuropathy! Some people have hands and feet that will burn and sting until their death. I had to take moxifloxacin and ciprofloxacin at two different times in my life. Besides the achilles, feet and hand tendon pain, both times I would have severe stinging pain in my scalp for months after taking them. Blessed as I am it went away again.
devwastaken 4y ago
The FDA warnings read like any other medication. This article does not point out why this is specifically worse, or how "rare" of an occurrence it is is or isn't. I can't know from this article wether the cause is this antibiotic.
antiatheist 4y ago
https://www.amr.gov.au/about-amr/amr-australia/amr-and-animal-health-australia https://www.amr.gov.au/about-amr/amr-australia/amr-and-anima...

falcolas 4y ago

I'm afraid this earns a "well, duh" from me. For a minimal cost to ranches, they can increase both their output and the reliability of that output. And the externalized costs? The ranches aren't held accountable for those, so they may as well not exist. And you can bet those ranches will fight tooth and nail against being held accountable; it is, after all, the most "logical" way to spend their resources to protect their revenue. Imagine the shareholder response if the profits were to drop significantly, and permanently. It's simply how we've trained corporations to behave.

snarf21 4y ago
This our biggest problem in the US, externalities are never priced in. Always easier to pay fines for pennies or to declare bankruptcy and start again.
- willnonya 4y ago
  By externalities you seem to mean the choices that other people make. unless the choice is to not biy their product how or why woukd these get factored in? how would you do so and retain a nominally free society? How would you justify this being our biggest problem?
  - lovich 4y ago
    Nah man, externalities here means externalities. In this specific instance the meat producing corporations are not paying for the increased risk of producing antibiotic resistant pathogens, which is a cost the rest of the planet has to bear. Price them in the same way any insurance model prices in risk. > how would you do so and retain a nominally free society? Nominally free doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want. Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose, as the saying goes. If you want to take actions that affect everyone negatively then you should be paying for that. Inversely there are also positive externalities and we should probably subsidize/pay groups who produce those
  - biorach 4y ago
    That's not what externalities means. Google "pricing in externalities"

nszceta 4y ago

Do these antibiotics and their metabolites stay in the meat post slaughter and make their way into the food supply?

Gordonjcp 4y ago
Yes, which is why giving antibiotics to livestock that are going for slaughter is illegal pretty much everywhere except the US. If you actually need to dose some to treat an illness, there are protocols to follow to ensure that they're clean before they go off to market.
- willnonya 4y ago
  That's not even based in reality. If you wait until after animals are sick to treat then depending on what disease it is you've lost all or most of a herd due to the way existing regulations require them to be handled.
  - biorach 4y ago
    Based on reality...? Here in the EU we have managed not to loose most of our herds.
  - nszceta 4y ago
    Do you see any problems with prophylactically dosing antibiotics yourself? Anything?
    - NegativeK 4y ago
      Human living conditions are nowhere near those of livestock. If we want to drop antibiotics, we're going to end up with significantly increased prices of meat due to increased land usage requirements. This would be ecologically good, but socially disastrous.
      - nszceta 4y ago
        Central Europeans eat a lot of meat and somehow they manage to keep prices under control without slamming animals with antibiotics prophylactically. Land and regulatory compliance costs are much higher than in the US too.

Gordonjcp 4y ago

And yet this only happens in the US.

elil17 4y ago
EU did it until last year, when they banned it. The US should follow their lead.
- Tor3 4y ago
  Some countries in Europe (e.g. the Nordic countries) banned the practice a decade or more ago already. What's new is that EU as a whole bans it. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/antibiotic-use-in-livestock-in-europe https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/antibiotic-use-in-livesto...
- biorach 4y ago
  My understanding is that even before the EU ban it was much less common in the EU than in the US because most EU countries regulate antibiotic use in agriculture.
  - Beltalowda 4y ago
    Also there's less need for it in the first place as welfare conditions are usually better. Who could have expected that livestock that's not kept unhealthy conditions tends to be healthier.
    - kwhitefoot 4y ago
      Except in Denmark where they use, or perhaps used to use, vast quantities of antibiotics intensive pig rearing.
      - Beltalowda 4y ago
        No doubt; same in Netherlands (more pigs than people in the country). But there's been improvement over the last 20 years on the animal welfare front, at least in the Netherlands and presumably Denmark too. And routine administration of antibiotics is banned everywhere in the EU now, AFAIK without too many exceptions.

milliams 4y ago

When I see a graph like [1] with the y-axis not zeroed I stop reading. Furthermore, the assertion that it "ticked back up" is not really supported by that graph any more than saying "it ticked back up and then it ticked down again" [1] https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24341618/KmRHP_antibiotic_sales_for_livestock_plummeted_then_ticked_back_up__1_.png https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24341618/K...

sonofhans 4y ago
Yes, that's a deceptive graph, very likely intentionally deceptive in order to reinforce the clickbait headline.
runarberg 4y ago
I agree it is totally unnecessary in this case, but sometimes truncating the y-axis serves a purpose. Many times it is for stylistic reasons, but also if the trend is more interesting then the scale, e.g. most stock charts truncate the y-axis because people don’t really care how much a stock has dropped relative to the value, but are more interested in the overall trend in the time period and the specific times when the trend reversed (I think, I don’t trade in stocks). It is unnecessary to do that in this case because the scale isn’t that vast and you can easily see the trend on an absolute scale. However, this graph serves the same purpose as—I gather—stock charts do. They are interested in what happened while the trend was downwards, and the specific time at when the trend stopped (or at least halted).
jweir 4y ago
The article is terrible. At the very least break down the use by animal and mass. Never mind cows are not raised like pigs which are not raised like chickens. To lump them all together is silly and insulting.
- callalex 4y ago
  But they don’t lump them together, and they acknowledge your concern specifically.

willnonya 4y ago

"Big meat can't quit antibiotics" Nor should they. The impact would be more far reaching than what's being discussed in the article.

biorach 4y ago
No one is calling for a total ban on antibiotic use. They're calling for a ban on routine mass administration, along the lines of what the EU has done. There are very compelling public health reasons for this.
xsmasher 4y ago
They could quit using antibiotics on animals that are not sick; quit using them just to make animals grow faster. But that would hurt their bottom line, so they won't do it unless regulated to do so.

benj111 4y ago

Can't or won't. The EU manages fine without so much antibiotics.

LatteLazy 4y ago

I feel like we're living through the death of democracy because a list of issues (from gerrymandering to demographics) mean that small groups wield oversized power. Agriculture is <6% of the US economy and only about 10% of the US workforce is related to it. Yet whole federal elections are decided based on candidates comments about corn and it receives huge pointless subsidies and is very badly under regulated. The same is true here in the UK. The same is true of other groups too. A core political issue in the 2020s will be how to deal with tiny groups holding oversized political power as we cannot afford to just keep paying them off (or worse, letting them "wag the dog" as they did with Brexit) anymore.

sonthonax 4y ago
Agriculture may be a small constituency, but you’d rather the food supply continues to flow.
- LatteLazy 4y ago
  No one is proposing a famine. Just that, maybe, we should have some safety standards?
bannedbybros 4y ago
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nikanj 4y ago
Who’s ”we”? The poor people don’t have any power, and the rich people don’t want to stop buying large subsidies with small campaign donations
AtlasBarfed 4y ago
It's also because of the Iowa caucuses. Why is that continued to wield such outlandish control of the Presidential Election Process?

m000 4y ago

> Big meat can’t quit antibiotics But you can quit big meat.

detroitcoder 4y ago
It is my understanding that you quitting big meat, doesn't affect your risk. If you are exposed to a new drug resistant pathogen that was the result of anti-biotics in cattle, chicken, pork, etc, it doesn't matter if you even eat meat. That said am I interpreting this right? How much of a risk does the use of antibiotics in meat present to a vegetarian?
- barbazoo 4y ago
  > How much of a risk does the use of antibiotics in meat present to a vegetarian? Whatever the exact value, it's most likely much lower. At least you're not ingesting whatever is left in the meat which, by reading some of the responses here, seem to come with significant risk.
- biorach 4y ago
  long-term yes, you're right - everyone is at risk due to over-use of antibiotics
- m000 4y ago
  I think quitting big meat is more about voting with your wallet, than directly reducing your risk from their antibiotics abuse.
NovaVeles 4y ago
It is one of the easiest things to do that has a sizeable impact on the world.
ornornor 4y ago
You can also quit meat entirely.

no_wizard 4y ago

If we follow the EU lead on this and it does take, I expect in short order the US government to pass some Farm aid bill that further passes the cost on to taxpayers, and for enforcement to be haphazard for ~decade or more. We can't regulate anything correctly in the US, it seems. Only recently have I ever seen, in my entire adult life, the FTC have any real teeth, and I doubt it'll last

eppp 4y ago
You will pay for it in taxes or at the meat counter. You are going to pay either way and likely both.
- no_wizard 4y ago
  Thats my point in not so many words (typical American fashion!). We'll likely pay for both while the businesses don't actually have to bear any real due to subsidies but they won't get passed on to the consumer, they'll just capture the profits
- callalex 4y ago
  This assumes that everyone has to purchase meat. The reality is that nobody has to purchase meat.
- culi 4y ago
  The government is already heavily subsidizing our costs here. Agriculture is one of the most heavily subsidized industries
dylan604 4y ago
>in my entire adult life, the FTC have any real teeth, and I doubt it'll last It's one of those situations where the people involved are so over powered by those they are meant to govern/regulate, that there's little chance of them being anything but toothless. The only time they seemingly act is when the acts are so large and publicly visible, that the only way to save any face is to publicly react. For the things that slide under the public's radar, they don't have resources for it and just let it go. At least, that's how it appears to me.

timeon 4y ago

Still waiting for antibiotics-resistant bacteria pandemics.

HarryHirsch 4y ago
Tuberculosis? Gonorhoea? MRSA in hospitals?
- vibrio 4y ago
  it is here, and as it grows, much of the pain of drug resistance won't be chaos and screaming in the streets. It won't happen all at once. It will increasingly impact people getting routine procedures, or otherwise minor injuries. Someone who got a wisdom tooth removed or a a deep cut stitched up may find it doesn't heal, and there is no longer a magic pill available to clear an infection. It has been a challenging economic problem. There are poor/complicated incentives for R&D or venture investment into this area.
  - MandieD 4y ago
    Childbirth will once again be the most dangerous thing an average woman does, when a Caesarean becomes far too risky for any but the most dire cases and tears that have to be sewn up will often lead to childbed fever again.
    - vibrio 4y ago
      100%. As someone who has seen a ”normal, orderly” childbirth, I’m not sure it’s not already the most dangerous thing an average woman does.
mnw21cam 4y ago
Sibling comments point out some pretty serious conditions that have been caused by antibiotic resistance. However, antibiotic resistance is more likely to cause isolated problems than pandemics. We haven't had antibiotics for very long, and most of the pandemics before we had them were viral, not bacterial. However, before we had antibiotics, we had the problem that cuts, scratches, surgery, and similar could get infected, and then you would lose a limb or likely die. We are slowly returning to that state. We live with a huge amount of bacteria around us, and in our guts. Our skin generally protects us from them very well, but those same bacteria that are harmless outside the body can kill when inside the body. Antibiotics not only improved survival rates from silly trivial injuries. They enabled a whole world of surgical interventions, because after surgery you can just give antibiotics to kill off any inadvertent infection you may have introduced. (Yes, sterile operating conditions help too.)

alexfromapex 4y ago

Common sense would suggest to use probiotics instead because, like AI, they adapt and overcome with the same genetic variations these pathogens use to mutate and create their offensive capabilities. Bacteria are advanced biological machines that evolve so it does not make sense to fight them with static defense mechanisms.

softfalcon 4y ago
Yeah, but that’s more expensive. Farming corps aren’t going to just accept that and open their wallets. Profit is everything for them.
culi 4y ago
antibiotics aren't just used to treat disease. They're specifically used because they kill probiotics. Those probiotics help ungulates like digest food matter better. Without them, they tend to store that food as fat instead of using it for more useful (from the cow's perspective) things like building muscle It's the same as the link in humans between obesity and gut microbiome dysbiosis

Synaesthesia 4y ago

For a slightly higher cost we can rear animals like cattle and chicken humanely and produce better quality eggs, beef etc. I don't understand this factory farm model.

adh636 4y ago
> For a slightly higher cost... > I don't understand this factory farm model Seems to me like you understand it just fine. Or maybe you are underestimating the cost difference or people's ability/willingness to spend more on these items.
AtlasBarfed 4y ago
IMO the only solution to the big "meat problem" be it CO2, land use, antibiotics resistance, ethics of slaughtering animals, treatment, is probably cultured meat. More government sponsored investment is definitely needed. The CO2 externality alone of cattle is a significant portion of humanity's CO2 emissions, something like 15%. The land use for meat production between feed and grazing is very large as well, google says 33% of farmland is dedicated to animal feed production. That's a huge amount of land consuming water resources, steadily losing topsoil, and removal of natural habitats and potential carbon sinks. Grazing is 35% of US land. Again, just a huge amount of land that is denied natural habitats.
- cbrozefsky 4y ago
  You don't fix industrial food systems with more industrial food systems. It's the industrial scale and the drive of capitalism to externalize costs and risks, and aggregate profits that is the problem. I would prefer a traditional vegetarian diet to a "cultured meat" diet. I don't want industrial food poducts in my body.
  - pookha 4y ago
    At one point in my life I was an avowed socialist. It look years for me to see through the bullshit to understand that "Capitalism" is really just negotiated (unplanned) order and sometimes that order is high-jacked by moron's. In the case of food production in the US the USDA is severely restricting the ability for small to medium sized operations to survive in the market and have tipped the scales in favor of giant multi-national corporations. those company's can have the on-site inspection overhead. A small business cannot. Thus they cannot sell their product across state lines. And so you wind up with aggregated industrial food systems.

andrewmatte 4y ago

I am not a doctor - I just write code... I remember being up in arms about weird stuff in my food when I first heard about it but now I think about the wellbeing of the animals while they're alive and shit, man, if I were sick I'd want antibiotics too. When is it excessive? Is it because they're all so close together in the factory "farm"? What do the veterinarians say about this?

toiletfuneral 4y ago
[dead]
nervousvarun 4y ago
It's not given to sick animals, it's constantly given to all livestock because it's cheap and it's seen as a sort of "preventative maintenance". Which is bad for all kinds of reasons 1) a lot of it makes it into your meals 2) it reduces the efficacy of antibiotics by constantly exposing it to bacteria (allowing them to eventually become resistant). Probably other reasons it's bad as well (I'm also not a doctor and just write code).
- vjerancrnjak 4y ago
  Giving antibiotics to animals also makes them grow bigger. It's billions of Petri dishes. It's a white swan in the making. It's really a shame that now humans are not given antibiotics to combat antibiotic resistance, when humans do not even consume most of the antibiotics produced.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    Not all antibiotics and diseases are the same. It still makes sense to not overprescribe powerful antibiotics that humans use for human diseases. Even if agriculture is recklessly using cheap antibiotics in animals.
- culi 4y ago
  you forgot one of the main reasons it's actually given. It completely breaks down their gut microbiome causing them to gain wait much much quicker

hammock 4y ago

I hear about antibiotics in meat constantly, but all of the biggest meat suppliers I know don't use them. For example, Perdue and Tyson both don't raise chicken with antibiotics. So where are antibiotics being used? Edit: why is this downvoted?

hotdogrelish 4y ago
I think that this is sometimes misleading marketing-speak. For example, Perdue says, "All of the animals for our branded products are raised in no-antibiotics-ever programs"; as a big company, surely this leaves enough vagueness for them to raise and sell animals with antibiotics under other brands/products. Since it's a private company, consumers can't know really what percentage of animals fall under one category or the other. https://corporate.perduefarms.com/news/statements/antibiotics-position-statement/ https://corporate.perduefarms.com/news/statements/antibiotic... Though it is interesting that such a big company would move towards that direction at all.
mokash 4y ago
suggest you read the article. The sea change in chicken production demonstrated it was possible to quickly scale down antibiotics in farming, but it didn’t do much to reduce overall use, as the chicken industry only used 6 percent of antibiotics in agriculture in 2016. And the momentum didn’t spread to other parts of the meat business, like beef and pork, which together account for over 80 percent of medically important antibiotics fed to farmed animals.

paxys 4y ago

A significant chunk of people in this country would give up (or at least wayyy reduce) meat consumption if they toured an average factory farm. Opening up this industry for public scrutiny would be a great first step, but many states now have laws banning people from even photographing them.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
May I go into your house and start taking photos?
- paxys 4y ago
  May I take pictures of abuse at my workplace and share it with people without going to jail?
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
    Up front- I'm all for opening these "farms" up to more public scrutiny but I'm not sure sneaky activists with cameras is the answer. The USDA should do a better job and Congress could pass more animal welfare guidelines. The problem is that factory farming doesn't harm people and it keeps meat cheap. Expensive meat hurts poor people and minorities the most. It's a disturbing and tough issue.
    - xrd 4y ago
      Isn't the point that they aren't and that the Congress is in the pocket of the meat industry? Saying that they should do something seems like a cop out.
      - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
        I don't think they're in the pocket of the meat industry. As I've said- the meat industry doesn't harm actual humans and regulating it would raise prices for actual humans.
- 4y ago

icf80 4y ago

next step in human evolution, just give up meat

cbrozefsky 4y ago

I encourage people to look for alternative sources for their meat, for all food, really. Local food systems get you a better product, and nowadays they can also be quite cheaper with all of the profit taking and fuel/energy cost driven inflation in the industrial food supply chain. We are blessed to be in Vermont, which has strong local food systems. We can get nearly all our produce and meat from local farms. We have been purchasing grass fed, pastured beef from Squier Family Farm, in Wallingford VT for years. We can get lamb and pork from the Bur-Ger family farm or any of a half dozen other families that show up at the local farmers market or sell in the coop. We recently had some Omaha steaks, claiming to be grass fed, shipped to us by a family member. They absolutely sucked in comparison. I have had Butcher Box steaks that were comparable, but also much more expensive, and way more material in packaging. For produce, we have a half dozen farms to choose from. It means eating more seasonally, but the quality of the veg is just so much greater. Now you can see this as privilege, but it's also the result of hundreds of neighbors making the conscious decision to support their local food system. While everyone was complaining about food price increases, the local food systems were WAY more stable in their pricing, and we even saw the price of grass fed ground beef drop around here. It requires more thought and planning, but it really pays off, IMO.

pacaro 4y ago
I think that you correctly identify this as a privilege. This points to another deeper problem that drives this. Americans expect to be able to eat meat, even when eating cheap food. Historically the food of poverty has either not included meat, or has used less desirable parts of the animal. If meat production was all done humanely, then a large section of society wouldn't be able to afford to eat meat, or not often. The subsidies, both explicit and implicit, in the meat industry in the US helps disguise income inequality
- cbrozefsky 4y ago
  I hear you, but I also think that something must be said for the fact that I am getting all the meat I want, at prices that are competitive with and in many cases cheaper than the heavily subsidized industrial farms, but I am doing it with a family that gets none of those subsidies, and processed at a butcher in my county that doesn't get those subsidies either. This could not scale to feed my old neighborhood in Chicago, for example. In that place, sourcing this way would be so much more expensive. I pay other prices for living in a very small city in the mountains, but this is a perk. I guess I just want to caution us from applying the usual "privilege" critiques and pretending like only super-scalar universal solutions are worth considering. I agree with the whole of your comment. Subsidies of industrial food systems shape our collective diets. My diet includes bulk purchased lentils and chickpeas, rice, home-ground wheat and other very cheap staples that are the majority of my calories. We're eating lentils, beans, rice, making our own bread, and the meat is in about 1/4 our meals. I feel like we eat very well, perhaps better than I have in my whole life if I measure it by health and ethics. I spent years in Chicago where my corner bar had a Michelin star, and there were dozens of equally good places and man did I enjoy my privilege of being a well paid single remote working hacker there.

jdfedgon 4y ago

Another excellent overview of the wider problem that's behind the usage of antibiotics in that scale can be found in the Meat Atlas, published by Heinrich Böll Foundation. https://eu.boell.org/sites/default/files/2021-09/MeatAtlas2021_final_web.pdf https://eu.boell.org/sites/default/files/2021-09/MeatAtlas20... It delivers an excellent compilation of the issues at play that will keep the problem going. As long as there's no change in policies, consumer behavior and/or some mad disease that brings down the meat industry, it's going to keep continued.

deleted 4y ago

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extasia 4y ago

My big meat needed antibiotics after I hit it raw :')

refurb 4y ago

The article is a bit wonky. The FDA banned the use of human antibiotics for any other purpose than treating disease in 2017. You can’t get away with not using antibiotics in livestock any more than you can do away with them in humans. And using non-human approved antibiotics on livestock won’t increase resistance because they aren’t the same drugs. And as for concerns about antibiotics in meat, there is a required “wash out” period when animals are treated. Exposure to humans consuming meat is minuscule. And meat is routinely tested on a random basis. Not to say reducing antibiotic use isn’t an important goal, but the article just brushes off the 42% reduction in use in 2017. Great progress has been made.

mikrotikker 4y ago

If its not clear to you that the FDA was captured by big business years ago, I dunno how to help you. Get off the Facebook and tiktok. Forget homophobia and racism, your country is being stolen out from under you.