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Most importantly, the use of novel antibiotics must be strictly prohibited in the animal food industry. This is crucial because the misuse of antibiotics in li

Most importantly, the use of novel antibiotics must be strictly prohibited in the animal food industry. This is crucial because the misuse of antibiotics in livestock farming has been a major driver of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), a global health crisis. When antibiotics are overused or improperly applied in animals, bacteria can evolve to become resistant, rendering these life-saving drugs ineffective for treating infections in humans and animals alike. It has always been a perversity that life-saving reserve antibiotics were ever permitted to prop up the grotesque machinery of the modern food industry—a system built on global-scale animal cruelty.

bestouff 2y ago
Yeah, like if the current US situation would tend towards food industry safety ...
- shafyy 2y ago
  The people have the power. Why not millions of people are on the fucking streets every day across the US is beyond me.
  - danparsonson 2y ago
    Perhaps because they feel like they have the power and it's more often the disenfranchised who end up on the streets?
  - kristiandupont 2y ago
    >The people have the power. What do you picture will happen because of protests, exactly? That the administration realizes the error of its ways? Because it seems more likely to me that they would use it as an excuse to implement more autocratic measures.
    - MrDrDr 2y ago
      https://www.aeinstein.org/ https://www.aeinstein.org/
      - kristiandupont 2y ago
        This gave me something to think about. Thank you.
    - digitaltinfoil 2y ago
      Protests let people at home who are feeling alone in their frustration that there are many more people who feel like them. I also felt like you did until someone framed it that way for me. A protest isn’t supposed to be a singular event, it’s a series of events that crescendos into a movement—and it’s the crescendo that scares the people in power.
      - DeathArrow 2y ago
        Then, since there are more people who voted for the current administration, there can be even more powerful counter protests. Then we can have people fighting in the streets, then a civil war.
        dxdm 2y ago
        Are you really trying to say that people should not protest, unless they are the overwhelming majority or easily ignored, because their protest will (or even just might) turn into a civil war?
        johnisgood 2y ago
        Civil war may be a necessary war, eventually.
      - astrange 2y ago
        Crescendoing into a movement doesn't /do/ anything. This is just self-satisfaction for the kinds of people who like protesting. Other things like voting and getting elected do actually do something.
  - emeril 2y ago
    -as a democratic american - why bother? -roughly half of the us populace supports the current authoritarian regime and the other half's senators and representatives are largely useless and aren't even doing what they can except for say wearing an adult diaper while giving a 25 hour speech -I fully plan on eventually moving to canada (or elsewhere) when the time comes - much easier to move than any other option
    - e40 2y ago
      Half the voters. 36% didn’t even vote.
      - brookst 2y ago
        Sure they did. They voted that they were fine with either option.
        speed_spread 2y ago
        Or did not approve of either option. No way to tell. Same result.
        ryandrake 2y ago
        If you don't bother to vote, then you're [almost literally] saying you're OK with whoever wins. If that wasn't your intention, you would vote for some third party that you were OK with.
        HPsquared 2y ago
        It's not an opinion poll. People vote to try and get their desired outcome. If someone views their preferred minor candidate as a lost cause in electoral terms, they won't bother going to vote because it won't make any difference to the outcome. Or, worse, there isn't a single candidate on the list in their district who shares their views.
  - deleted 2y ago
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  - palijer 2y ago
    The average person doesn't have capacity to care about policies that lead to the long term development of drug-resistant bacteria. We couldn't even convince everyone to wear masks, this won't be an issue people will rise up in mass protests for... People are literally being kidnapped and thrown into detention centers without due process and there are not massive protests. It takes a lot to make people protest, this ain't a battle for it.
    - mandmandam 2y ago
      > People are literally being kidnapped and thrown into detention centers without due process and there are not massive protests. For the record, there have been (and will be more) significant protests about this [0]. Corporate media does a fantastic job of ignoring and minimizing protests they're not in favor of (because they are actually effective...). If you're old enough to remember, think back to how the world held some of the largest anti-war protests in history back in the early 00's. Turns out, corporate media with strong financial links to defense contractors aren't much interested in covering that. At the same time reporters who took too much of an anti-war stance were literally fired... And things have gotten progressively worse with every administration since.
      - victorbjorklund 2y ago
        How many millions joined those street protest? Not saying it is a bad cause but there has not been any significant protests about it with any significant % of the popultion.
        logifail 2y ago
        > How many millions joined those street protest? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_prot...: "The British Stop the War Coalition (Stop) claimed the protest in London was the largest political demonstration in the city's history. Police estimated attendance as well in excess of 750,000 people and the BBC estimated that around a million attended." https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/feb/11/slugs-iraq-war-london-protest-2003-legacy https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/feb/11/slugs-iraq-w...: "In February 2003, 1.5 million people protested in London against the looming Iraq war. They didn’t stop the conflict… but their legacy still looms large" add in David Kelly - RIP - ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kelly_(weapons_expert) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kelly_(weapons_expert) ) and it's not a surprise that people are unconvinced that peaceful protest will achieve anything :/
  - deleted 2y ago
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  - MarcelOlsz 2y ago
    Employment tied to healthcare. There's your answer.
    - lotsofpulp 2y ago
      The only benefit of health insurance purchased via employers is that you can use pre-tax income to pay for it. Otherwise, it has all the same deductibles and out of pocket maximums as policies purchased on healthcare.gov, except for government employees and some unionized businesses. The answer is that most Americans still have pretty decent lives, and they like those in power (whether or not they are actually benefiting).
      - bongodongobob 2y ago
        Uh, no, it's a group plan so it's cheaper.
        DANmode 2y ago
        It can be. It often isn't, especially if you're the user using the plan.
        lotsofpulp 2y ago
        Not necessarily. The risk profile of the group in a specific self insured business is not guaranteed to be healthier than one not part of a business. Most states publish their approved premiums for healthcare.gov plans, and I don’t think I’ve encountered a self insured business plan with materially different premiums/deductibles/oop max.
  - harddrivereque 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - wormlord 2y ago
    It took 30 years between Lenin's brother being executed by the state, and the Russian revolution. History has momentum, and the gains from the New Deal are still enough that many Americans dont feel comfortable putting their bodies on the line. People's dispositions are a function of their material reality and the reality is that most people haven't internalized the damage yet.
    - NooneAtAll3 2y ago
      it took a world war for the state to weaken enough to matter...
    - XorNot 2y ago
      Also Americans have always allowed government over reach and corruption on the assumption that the AR-15 they have a pretty good grouping on at weekends is what'll solve the problem if it gets "really bad". I call it the violence event horizon: a whole lot of people's critical thinking just stops, as though an actual war will make things so much simpler.
    - ip26 2y ago
      As I look at it, rhetorically, when is the point for a US citizen where taking up arms against the US government seems less dangerous than business as usual? I’d say it’s still quite a ways off for most.
  - nine_k 2y ago
    Trump administration is branded as "Republican", even though Republican icons like Reagan would be appalled by it. In the mind of most Americans, the opposition to the Republican party is the Democratic party, which has been comparably insane lately, only a different direction. A real opposition that the US politics needs is a kind of "common sense party" or "real needs party", but the FPTP election system, and the coasts vs "flyover states" division pushed by the forces that benefit from the "us vs them" division (most political forces) work against that. Forces like Forward Party, that sort of seem to fit the bill, are tiny. People don't go out to streets just because; they need well-formulated ideas, some local leaders that would organize it, groups of like-minded people (online at least) that let the ideas brew and steep, etc. All this is not in a great shape now.
    - jyounker 2y ago
      > Democratic party, which has been comparably insane lately, only a different direction. How do you see the democratic party being insane in a different direction?
  - autoexec 2y ago
    Americans are too busy going to work, with an increasing number of them needing more than one job just to get by. If people protest instead of working they will be fired which means they'll also lose their health insurance. Since we're all sickened by the poisons corporations put into our food/water/air/products and by a sedentary lifestyle which has been strictly enforced from the age of 5 we wouldn't last long without health insurance. Almost all Americans are just one uncovered medical expense away from bankruptcy and/or homelessness. Even still, there have been a huge amount of protests recently. There are protests nearly every weekend in and around major cities. All those fired government workers have a lot more time on their hands so I expect that will continue (until their prescription medications start running out anyway) https://wtop.com/dc/2025/03/vets-protest-trump-doge-and-musk-on-national-mall/ https://wtop.com/dc/2025/03/vets-protest-trump-doge-and-musk... https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/02/17/anti-trump-musk-protests-us/78962739007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/02/17/anti-t... https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/02/05/anti-trump-protests-50-states-updates/78239472007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/02/05/anti-t... https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/thousands-across-the-u-s-protest-trump-policies https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/thousands-across-the-u... https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2025/04/04/hands-off-protest-of-trump-and-musk-comes-to-mansfield-on-saturday/82782534007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2025/04/04/hands-off-pro... https://www.npr.org/2025/03/29/nx-s1-5343986/anti-musk-protests-planned-worldwide https://www.npr.org/2025/03/29/nx-s1-5343986/anti-musk-prote...
    - tacet 2y ago
      > If people protest instead of working they will be fired which means they'll also lose their health insurance. Not protesting got Americans to this spot. sincerely a 28 day per year paid vacation enjoyer.
  - sMarsIntruder 2y ago
    Nice concept of democracy you have
- robotnikman 2y ago
  In general I would agree, but with RFK in charge of that stuff I hope he is able to enact some change
  - tshaddox 2y ago
    I don't know if there's much merit in opposing antibiotic use in cattle if that position is just a small coincidental component of your broader pro-disease ideology.
    - XorNot 2y ago
      And more importantly you're also just incompetent while publicly admitting you fired a bunch of people without actually being sure you wanted to. Feels like we have a word for that: when you unnecessarily expend resources. I'm sure it'll come to me...
- deepsun 2y ago
  Mmm why US specifically? The most overuse of livestock antibiotics is in India (and India has a lot of drug factories).
  - dartos 2y ago
    really? because of the current situation in the US...
  - Quarrelsome 2y ago
    US is well known for its questionable high scale farming practices that often have no interest in any sort of animal welfare. Its one of the primary reasons for import controls across Europe for US meat products. It comes up every time the UK or EU negotiate trade deals with the US and came up extremely often during Brexit. If those import markets were open European producers would struggle to compete with US-agri due to its sheer volume and lack of interest in animal welfare and/or disease control. The UK specifically suffered issues in the past with such issues via "Mad Cow Disease" in the 90s and has attempted to reform its practices as a consequence. Conversely US agri still seems to ignore these existential nightmares, as most recently seen with Bird Flu and the new administration's troubling ideas with how to deal with it (e.g. the suggestion to avoid culls in order to "find resistent birds").
    - lazide 2y ago
      This is really hilarious, India’s practices are orders of magnitudes worse. They just don’t get the press, and no one expects better, so….
      - skeletal88 2y ago
        I don't think we are inporting or forced to import Indian beef or meat. Unlike the US tried tp force us to import their chlorinated chicken etc
        lazide 2y ago
        We’re talking antibiotic abuse eh?
noduerme 2y ago
Top-tier antibiotics need to be reserved for humans. Absolutely. Obviously, overuse of any antibiotics in huge populations of humans or animals leads to bacteria evolving resistance... for a random event in a trillion, it ends up being a pretty determinstic fact, just like neutron decay. It doesn't necessarily follow that using 2nd or 3rd tier antibiotics in limited cases in animal populations is always unwarranted, so long as we're aware of the potential for resistance and we're developing new ways to counter it. You have to play the cards you're dealt. Yes, the elimination of mass meat farming would go a long way toward preventing the adaptation of novel resistant bacteria. The situation, though, is that this type of farming will continue to happen for a long time. Regulations should prohibit the overuse of antibiotics, without completely preventing their use.
goodpoint 2y ago
Routine use of antibiotics is already prohibited in EU and most developed countries.
- wiz21c 2y ago
  How routine is routine ? I'm sure the agro industry will have a very broad interpretation of that...
  - friendzis 2y ago
    Roughly preventative use.
- DeathArrow 2y ago
  In most EU countries it is very hard to reach a doctor in decent time unless you can afford to pay a lot. So you can suffer for weeks with an infection and high fever because the pharmacies won't sell you antibiotics because you don't have a paper from a doctor.
  - lasergyro 2y ago
    Been in Portugal and Austria. Never had this issue, public doctors only.
  - StormChaser_5 2y ago
    Here in Ireland I've never had to wait more than a few hours to see a doctor to get a prescription for an infection. Can be a bit harder at the weekend but still seen the same day
  - poincaredisk 2y ago
    In which EU country do you live? I moved twice and I never had this experience. Visits this routine can be done almost without delay, sometimes directly off the street inbetween scheduled patients.
  - johnisgood 2y ago
    Even in Hungary it is easy to reach a doctor. The difficulty is in finding a doctor who gives a damn.
shafyy 2y ago
Completely agree. Reducing or getting rid of livestock animal agriculture will help with many major challenges we have today, like climate change, loss of biodiversity, animal cruelty, antimicrobial resistance. But hey, gotta have that cheap burger, huh? We, the people, have the power to improve this situation. Call your representatives, do activism, talk to your friends about it, vote for the right candidates.
- exe34 2y ago
  we the people don't want change.
  - BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
    Are you arguing against the change itself or making the point that most people don’t care? Sorry to ask I just can’t tell.
    - exe34 2y ago
      the latter. people even claim to want change, but then they go about doing the same old things every day. they want others to lower their quality of life or spend more.
      - shafyy 2y ago
        That's because many people just don't have time to take action or inform themselves, because all they care about (and rightly so) is how to bring food on the table for their kids. Of course, this is exactly what authoritarian governments want. People who are exhausted, just poor enough but not too poor to start a revolution. People who don't have the time to read (really read, not watch TikTok videos) about important issues.
      - kelnos 2y ago
        Sure, because people have limited bandwidth for caring about things. I wish all livestock was raised humanely, and that the cost of meat accurately reflected that actual costs to society. But I like to eat meat, and I have lots of other things in my life to worry about; doing something to improve this situation is nowhere near the list of things I will actually have the bandwidth to work on. > they want others to lower their quality of life or spend more. This is the other sucky part: while we should be paying the "real" cost of meat, I don't think it's fair to make meat only affordable to those who are fairly well-off. That sounds like something out of a dystopian speculative fiction novel.
lm28469 2y ago
> This is crucial because the misuse of antibiotics in livestock farming has been a major driver of antimicrobial resistance Who cares ? As long as we have cheap eggs and burger patties!!!
meindnoch 2y ago
Meanwhile doctors in India hand antibiotics out like candy.
- aqme28 2y ago
  Though I believe that still pales in comparison to US agricultural use. Based on some rough data sources I think the US uses about 2-3x more antibiotics on livestock than India uses on people.
  - arunc 2y ago
    Antibiotics are not cheap. Make it cheaper and you will see how they will use it on livestock.
    - timewizard 2y ago
      There are already regulations around this. There are new ones coming. It's very easy to test for compliance.
  - fc417fc802 2y ago
    The relative usage isn't even the primary issue. The surrounding conditions are. Farms are ideal breeding grounds for quite a few reasons. Add to that rather barbaric practices that can result in treatment periods dragging on quite a bit and the result isn't at all surprising.
  - AngryData 2y ago
    There is also a not insignificant portion of "animal antibiotics" that people buy to use themselves because they can't afford the 6x markup on "human" antibiotics plus the doctors fees only to get the same pill made in the same factory with a slightly different label slapped on it.
- emeril 2y ago
  and those indian made antibiotics sometimes are little different in effectiveness than candy I dread it when any generic medication I get is made in india or china since the fda doesn't meaningfully regulate/test their stuff
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bilsbie 2y ago
If we have enough drugs with different mechanics bacteria can’t out evolve all of them. It becomes less of a risk.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  Sure they can, by being exposed one at a time, developing resistance to each.
  - scaredginger 2y ago
    There may be some cost to each resistance gained, reducing the fitness of the bacteria
    - pfdietz 2y ago
      And there may be general resistance mechanisms that hit more than one chemical (like changes in membrane permeability and efflux pumps.) Over time, with more exposure, the costs can be expected to decline as resistance is optimized. Ultimately resistance can evolve that kicks in only on exposure to the chemicals in question. Bacteria already do this with, say, the enzyme needed to metabolize lactose. The gene isn't expressed until lactose is present.
  - hinkley 2y ago
    This is why we use “cocktails” on resistant cases now. Kill it three different ways at once and it cannot adapt fast enough to leave dna fragments for the next microbe to pick up and continue the work.
    - lolinder 2y ago
      Just as long as we don't start overusing the cocktail. Natural selection is a very powerful force, all it takes is one bacterium in a million that has resistance to all three methods to start an evolution.
  - ip26 2y ago
facile3232 2y ago
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cantrecallmypwd 2y ago
Meat agriculture, as practiced in most of the world on an industrial basis with insufficient regulation, leads to pandemics, evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, climate change, and air, water, and soil pollution.
- mmooss 2y ago
  > leads to pandemics Regarding this detail, there has been only one pandemic recently and it has not been attributed to 'meat agriculture', though it may have involved wild meat.
  - AngryData 2y ago
    But we can see throughout history that the prevalence of disease follows closely with societies that raise animals. That said, I think it is a poor excuse for advocating against animal husbandry. Disease will always exist and spread, but keeping livestock and pets does increase the chances of it happening a bit.
    - mmooss 2y ago
      > we can see throughout history that the prevalence of disease follows closely with societies that raise animals Assuming that's true, when was the last time it happened?
refurb 2y ago
Routine antibiotic use in livestock has been banned in the US for a few years. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/12/health/fda-to-phase-out-use-of-some-antibiotics-in-animals-raised-for-meat.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/12/health/fda-to-phase-out-u...

bestouff 2y ago

Yeah, like if the current US situation would tend towards food industry safety ...

shafyy 2y ago
The people have the power. Why not millions of people are on the fucking streets every day across the US is beyond me.
- danparsonson 2y ago
  Perhaps because they feel like they have the power and it's more often the disenfranchised who end up on the streets?
- kristiandupont 2y ago
  >The people have the power. What do you picture will happen because of protests, exactly? That the administration realizes the error of its ways? Because it seems more likely to me that they would use it as an excuse to implement more autocratic measures.
  - MrDrDr 2y ago
    https://www.aeinstein.org/ https://www.aeinstein.org/
    - kristiandupont 2y ago
      This gave me something to think about. Thank you.
  - digitaltinfoil 2y ago
    Protests let people at home who are feeling alone in their frustration that there are many more people who feel like them. I also felt like you did until someone framed it that way for me. A protest isn’t supposed to be a singular event, it’s a series of events that crescendos into a movement—and it’s the crescendo that scares the people in power.
    - DeathArrow 2y ago
      Then, since there are more people who voted for the current administration, there can be even more powerful counter protests. Then we can have people fighting in the streets, then a civil war.
      - dxdm 2y ago
        Are you really trying to say that people should not protest, unless they are the overwhelming majority or easily ignored, because their protest will (or even just might) turn into a civil war?
        johnisgood 2y ago
        Civil war may be a necessary war, eventually.
    - astrange 2y ago
      Crescendoing into a movement doesn't /do/ anything. This is just self-satisfaction for the kinds of people who like protesting. Other things like voting and getting elected do actually do something.
- emeril 2y ago
  -as a democratic american - why bother? -roughly half of the us populace supports the current authoritarian regime and the other half's senators and representatives are largely useless and aren't even doing what they can except for say wearing an adult diaper while giving a 25 hour speech -I fully plan on eventually moving to canada (or elsewhere) when the time comes - much easier to move than any other option
  - e40 2y ago
    Half the voters. 36% didn’t even vote.
    - brookst 2y ago
      Sure they did. They voted that they were fine with either option.
      - speed_spread 2y ago
        Or did not approve of either option. No way to tell. Same result.
        ryandrake 2y ago
        If you don't bother to vote, then you're [almost literally] saying you're OK with whoever wins. If that wasn't your intention, you would vote for some third party that you were OK with.
        HPsquared 2y ago
        It's not an opinion poll. People vote to try and get their desired outcome. If someone views their preferred minor candidate as a lost cause in electoral terms, they won't bother going to vote because it won't make any difference to the outcome. Or, worse, there isn't a single candidate on the list in their district who shares their views.
- deleted 2y ago
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- palijer 2y ago
  The average person doesn't have capacity to care about policies that lead to the long term development of drug-resistant bacteria. We couldn't even convince everyone to wear masks, this won't be an issue people will rise up in mass protests for... People are literally being kidnapped and thrown into detention centers without due process and there are not massive protests. It takes a lot to make people protest, this ain't a battle for it.
  - mandmandam 2y ago
    > People are literally being kidnapped and thrown into detention centers without due process and there are not massive protests. For the record, there have been (and will be more) significant protests about this [0]. Corporate media does a fantastic job of ignoring and minimizing protests they're not in favor of (because they are actually effective...). If you're old enough to remember, think back to how the world held some of the largest anti-war protests in history back in the early 00's. Turns out, corporate media with strong financial links to defense contractors aren't much interested in covering that. At the same time reporters who took too much of an anti-war stance were literally fired... And things have gotten progressively worse with every administration since.
    - victorbjorklund 2y ago
      How many millions joined those street protest? Not saying it is a bad cause but there has not been any significant protests about it with any significant % of the popultion.
      - logifail 2y ago
        > How many millions joined those street protest? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_prot...: "The British Stop the War Coalition (Stop) claimed the protest in London was the largest political demonstration in the city's history. Police estimated attendance as well in excess of 750,000 people and the BBC estimated that around a million attended." https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/feb/11/slugs-iraq-war-london-protest-2003-legacy https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/feb/11/slugs-iraq-w...: "In February 2003, 1.5 million people protested in London against the looming Iraq war. They didn’t stop the conflict… but their legacy still looms large" add in David Kelly - RIP - ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kelly_(weapons_expert) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kelly_(weapons_expert) ) and it's not a surprise that people are unconvinced that peaceful protest will achieve anything :/
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- MarcelOlsz 2y ago
  Employment tied to healthcare. There's your answer.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    The only benefit of health insurance purchased via employers is that you can use pre-tax income to pay for it. Otherwise, it has all the same deductibles and out of pocket maximums as policies purchased on healthcare.gov, except for government employees and some unionized businesses. The answer is that most Americans still have pretty decent lives, and they like those in power (whether or not they are actually benefiting).
    - bongodongobob 2y ago
      Uh, no, it's a group plan so it's cheaper.
      - DANmode 2y ago
        It can be. It often isn't, especially if you're the user using the plan.
      - lotsofpulp 2y ago
        Not necessarily. The risk profile of the group in a specific self insured business is not guaranteed to be healthier than one not part of a business. Most states publish their approved premiums for healthcare.gov plans, and I don’t think I’ve encountered a self insured business plan with materially different premiums/deductibles/oop max.
- harddrivereque 2y ago
  [flagged]
- wormlord 2y ago
  It took 30 years between Lenin's brother being executed by the state, and the Russian revolution. History has momentum, and the gains from the New Deal are still enough that many Americans dont feel comfortable putting their bodies on the line. People's dispositions are a function of their material reality and the reality is that most people haven't internalized the damage yet.
  - NooneAtAll3 2y ago
    it took a world war for the state to weaken enough to matter...
  - XorNot 2y ago
    Also Americans have always allowed government over reach and corruption on the assumption that the AR-15 they have a pretty good grouping on at weekends is what'll solve the problem if it gets "really bad". I call it the violence event horizon: a whole lot of people's critical thinking just stops, as though an actual war will make things so much simpler.
  - ip26 2y ago
    As I look at it, rhetorically, when is the point for a US citizen where taking up arms against the US government seems less dangerous than business as usual? I’d say it’s still quite a ways off for most.
- nine_k 2y ago
  Trump administration is branded as "Republican", even though Republican icons like Reagan would be appalled by it. In the mind of most Americans, the opposition to the Republican party is the Democratic party, which has been comparably insane lately, only a different direction. A real opposition that the US politics needs is a kind of "common sense party" or "real needs party", but the FPTP election system, and the coasts vs "flyover states" division pushed by the forces that benefit from the "us vs them" division (most political forces) work against that. Forces like Forward Party, that sort of seem to fit the bill, are tiny. People don't go out to streets just because; they need well-formulated ideas, some local leaders that would organize it, groups of like-minded people (online at least) that let the ideas brew and steep, etc. All this is not in a great shape now.
  - jyounker 2y ago
    > Democratic party, which has been comparably insane lately, only a different direction. How do you see the democratic party being insane in a different direction?
- autoexec 2y ago
  Americans are too busy going to work, with an increasing number of them needing more than one job just to get by. If people protest instead of working they will be fired which means they'll also lose their health insurance. Since we're all sickened by the poisons corporations put into our food/water/air/products and by a sedentary lifestyle which has been strictly enforced from the age of 5 we wouldn't last long without health insurance. Almost all Americans are just one uncovered medical expense away from bankruptcy and/or homelessness. Even still, there have been a huge amount of protests recently. There are protests nearly every weekend in and around major cities. All those fired government workers have a lot more time on their hands so I expect that will continue (until their prescription medications start running out anyway) https://wtop.com/dc/2025/03/vets-protest-trump-doge-and-musk-on-national-mall/ https://wtop.com/dc/2025/03/vets-protest-trump-doge-and-musk... https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/02/17/anti-trump-musk-protests-us/78962739007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/02/17/anti-t... https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/02/05/anti-trump-protests-50-states-updates/78239472007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/02/05/anti-t... https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/thousands-across-the-u-s-protest-trump-policies https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/thousands-across-the-u... https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2025/04/04/hands-off-protest-of-trump-and-musk-comes-to-mansfield-on-saturday/82782534007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2025/04/04/hands-off-pro... https://www.npr.org/2025/03/29/nx-s1-5343986/anti-musk-protests-planned-worldwide https://www.npr.org/2025/03/29/nx-s1-5343986/anti-musk-prote...
  - tacet 2y ago
    > If people protest instead of working they will be fired which means they'll also lose their health insurance. Not protesting got Americans to this spot. sincerely a 28 day per year paid vacation enjoyer.
- sMarsIntruder 2y ago
  Nice concept of democracy you have
robotnikman 2y ago
In general I would agree, but with RFK in charge of that stuff I hope he is able to enact some change
- tshaddox 2y ago
  I don't know if there's much merit in opposing antibiotic use in cattle if that position is just a small coincidental component of your broader pro-disease ideology.
  - XorNot 2y ago
    And more importantly you're also just incompetent while publicly admitting you fired a bunch of people without actually being sure you wanted to. Feels like we have a word for that: when you unnecessarily expend resources. I'm sure it'll come to me...
deepsun 2y ago
Mmm why US specifically? The most overuse of livestock antibiotics is in India (and India has a lot of drug factories).
- dartos 2y ago
  really? because of the current situation in the US...
- Quarrelsome 2y ago
  US is well known for its questionable high scale farming practices that often have no interest in any sort of animal welfare. Its one of the primary reasons for import controls across Europe for US meat products. It comes up every time the UK or EU negotiate trade deals with the US and came up extremely often during Brexit. If those import markets were open European producers would struggle to compete with US-agri due to its sheer volume and lack of interest in animal welfare and/or disease control. The UK specifically suffered issues in the past with such issues via "Mad Cow Disease" in the 90s and has attempted to reform its practices as a consequence. Conversely US agri still seems to ignore these existential nightmares, as most recently seen with Bird Flu and the new administration's troubling ideas with how to deal with it (e.g. the suggestion to avoid culls in order to "find resistent birds").
  - lazide 2y ago
    This is really hilarious, India’s practices are orders of magnitudes worse. They just don’t get the press, and no one expects better, so….
    - skeletal88 2y ago
      I don't think we are inporting or forced to import Indian beef or meat. Unlike the US tried tp force us to import their chlorinated chicken etc
      - lazide 2y ago
        We’re talking antibiotic abuse eh?

noduerme 2y ago

Top-tier antibiotics need to be reserved for humans. Absolutely. Obviously, overuse of any antibiotics in huge populations of humans or animals leads to bacteria evolving resistance... for a random event in a trillion, it ends up being a pretty determinstic fact, just like neutron decay. It doesn't necessarily follow that using 2nd or 3rd tier antibiotics in limited cases in animal populations is always unwarranted, so long as we're aware of the potential for resistance and we're developing new ways to counter it. You have to play the cards you're dealt. Yes, the elimination of mass meat farming would go a long way toward preventing the adaptation of novel resistant bacteria. The situation, though, is that this type of farming will continue to happen for a long time. Regulations should prohibit the overuse of antibiotics, without completely preventing their use.

goodpoint 2y ago

Routine use of antibiotics is already prohibited in EU and most developed countries.

wiz21c 2y ago
How routine is routine ? I'm sure the agro industry will have a very broad interpretation of that...
- friendzis 2y ago
  Roughly preventative use.
DeathArrow 2y ago
In most EU countries it is very hard to reach a doctor in decent time unless you can afford to pay a lot. So you can suffer for weeks with an infection and high fever because the pharmacies won't sell you antibiotics because you don't have a paper from a doctor.
- lasergyro 2y ago
  Been in Portugal and Austria. Never had this issue, public doctors only.
- StormChaser_5 2y ago
  Here in Ireland I've never had to wait more than a few hours to see a doctor to get a prescription for an infection. Can be a bit harder at the weekend but still seen the same day
- poincaredisk 2y ago
  In which EU country do you live? I moved twice and I never had this experience. Visits this routine can be done almost without delay, sometimes directly off the street inbetween scheduled patients.
- johnisgood 2y ago
  Even in Hungary it is easy to reach a doctor. The difficulty is in finding a doctor who gives a damn.

shafyy 2y ago

Completely agree. Reducing or getting rid of livestock animal agriculture will help with many major challenges we have today, like climate change, loss of biodiversity, animal cruelty, antimicrobial resistance. But hey, gotta have that cheap burger, huh? We, the people, have the power to improve this situation. Call your representatives, do activism, talk to your friends about it, vote for the right candidates.

exe34 2y ago
we the people don't want change.
- BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
  Are you arguing against the change itself or making the point that most people don’t care? Sorry to ask I just can’t tell.
  - exe34 2y ago
    the latter. people even claim to want change, but then they go about doing the same old things every day. they want others to lower their quality of life or spend more.
    - shafyy 2y ago
      That's because many people just don't have time to take action or inform themselves, because all they care about (and rightly so) is how to bring food on the table for their kids. Of course, this is exactly what authoritarian governments want. People who are exhausted, just poor enough but not too poor to start a revolution. People who don't have the time to read (really read, not watch TikTok videos) about important issues.
    - kelnos 2y ago
      Sure, because people have limited bandwidth for caring about things. I wish all livestock was raised humanely, and that the cost of meat accurately reflected that actual costs to society. But I like to eat meat, and I have lots of other things in my life to worry about; doing something to improve this situation is nowhere near the list of things I will actually have the bandwidth to work on. > they want others to lower their quality of life or spend more. This is the other sucky part: while we should be paying the "real" cost of meat, I don't think it's fair to make meat only affordable to those who are fairly well-off. That sounds like something out of a dystopian speculative fiction novel.

lm28469 2y ago

> This is crucial because the misuse of antibiotics in livestock farming has been a major driver of antimicrobial resistance Who cares ? As long as we have cheap eggs and burger patties!!!

meindnoch 2y ago

Meanwhile doctors in India hand antibiotics out like candy.

aqme28 2y ago
Though I believe that still pales in comparison to US agricultural use. Based on some rough data sources I think the US uses about 2-3x more antibiotics on livestock than India uses on people.
- arunc 2y ago
  Antibiotics are not cheap. Make it cheaper and you will see how they will use it on livestock.
  - timewizard 2y ago
    There are already regulations around this. There are new ones coming. It's very easy to test for compliance.
- fc417fc802 2y ago
  The relative usage isn't even the primary issue. The surrounding conditions are. Farms are ideal breeding grounds for quite a few reasons. Add to that rather barbaric practices that can result in treatment periods dragging on quite a bit and the result isn't at all surprising.
- AngryData 2y ago
  There is also a not insignificant portion of "animal antibiotics" that people buy to use themselves because they can't afford the 6x markup on "human" antibiotics plus the doctors fees only to get the same pill made in the same factory with a slightly different label slapped on it.
emeril 2y ago
and those indian made antibiotics sometimes are little different in effectiveness than candy I dread it when any generic medication I get is made in india or china since the fda doesn't meaningfully regulate/test their stuff

deleted 2y ago

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bilsbie 2y ago

If we have enough drugs with different mechanics bacteria can’t out evolve all of them. It becomes less of a risk.

pfdietz 2y ago
Sure they can, by being exposed one at a time, developing resistance to each.
- scaredginger 2y ago
  There may be some cost to each resistance gained, reducing the fitness of the bacteria
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    And there may be general resistance mechanisms that hit more than one chemical (like changes in membrane permeability and efflux pumps.) Over time, with more exposure, the costs can be expected to decline as resistance is optimized. Ultimately resistance can evolve that kicks in only on exposure to the chemicals in question. Bacteria already do this with, say, the enzyme needed to metabolize lactose. The gene isn't expressed until lactose is present.
- hinkley 2y ago
  This is why we use “cocktails” on resistant cases now. Kill it three different ways at once and it cannot adapt fast enough to leave dna fragments for the next microbe to pick up and continue the work.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    Just as long as we don't start overusing the cocktail. Natural selection is a very powerful force, all it takes is one bacterium in a million that has resistance to all three methods to start an evolution.
- ip26 2y ago

facile3232 2y ago

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cantrecallmypwd 2y ago

Meat agriculture, as practiced in most of the world on an industrial basis with insufficient regulation, leads to pandemics, evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, climate change, and air, water, and soil pollution.

mmooss 2y ago
> leads to pandemics Regarding this detail, there has been only one pandemic recently and it has not been attributed to 'meat agriculture', though it may have involved wild meat.
- AngryData 2y ago
  But we can see throughout history that the prevalence of disease follows closely with societies that raise animals. That said, I think it is a poor excuse for advocating against animal husbandry. Disease will always exist and spread, but keeping livestock and pets does increase the chances of it happening a bit.
  - mmooss 2y ago
    > we can see throughout history that the prevalence of disease follows closely with societies that raise animals Assuming that's true, when was the last time it happened?

refurb 2y ago

Routine antibiotic use in livestock has been banned in the US for a few years. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/12/health/fda-to-phase-out-use-of-some-antibiotics-in-animals-raised-for-meat.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/12/health/fda-to-phase-out-u...