12 ms·

In America, the number one thing you can do is stop eating factory farmed meat. That is a huge contributor to antibiotics resistance. Either eat mainly vegan or

by chez17 12y ago

In America, the number one thing you can do is stop eating factory farmed meat. That is a huge contributor to antibiotics resistance. Either eat mainly vegan or spend the few extra dollars to buy meat that isn't gross. Remember, it is MORE EXPENSIVE in the long run to buy that cheap meat. When you have a routine infection that can't be cured with antibiotics, the hospital bills will be far more then the few dollars you saved. Eat less meat. Oh, and you'll massively reduce your carbon footprint as well, and you'll use less land and water, and you'll be healthier (if you cut out red meat). It really is a no brainer.

mef 12y ago
Citation for these claims? Edit: here's one article about the use of fluoroquinolones on poultry contributing to the increase of fluoroquinolones-resistant Campylobacter http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120405131431.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120405131431.ht...
- chez17 12y ago
  In his book "Eating Animals" Jonathan Safran Foer dedicates a lot of time to this. Remember, he is not a vegan. This shouldn't be important but there are few groups that get more irrational hate than vegans. He cites multiple studies and if you are really concerned it's a quick read. One study showed how effectiveness of a specific antibiotic was at ~99% and then only 10 years after it being introduced into livestock feed the effectiveness shot down to 80%. So we went from about a 1 in 100 chance of it not working to around 1 in 5. That is a massive and terrifying difference. I urge you to read more. Clearly this is an issue I care about. I firmly believe this is the most likely cause of my unnecessary death. Far more than war or terrorism. Protect yourself, your loved ones, your children, your grand children. Stop eating meat that is fed antibiotics.
  - araes 12y ago
    "few groups that get more irrational hate than vegans" This, like most stereotypes, is built around a core of experience, and then expounded. With a lot of vegans, its often not that they're wrong about what they say, its how they convey it. This came up today in another HN discussion on smoking as well. Its ok for them to not like things, just don't be a jerk about it. On topic, while I agree that we may very well all die, this can also be looked at in a different perspective. When the antibiotic in question was first introduced, it had effectively a 5/5 chance of working. After ten years, it then had a 4/5 chance of working. Like most power laws, in maybe 10-20 years, it will have a 3/5 chance of working, ect... with a decay rate that slows with time. Like all evolution, antibiotic resistance is driven primarily by the rate of survival and reproduction in the population. If resistance against AntibioticA is a strong predictor of survival (like when its newly introduced, and highly effective), then lots of bacteria will develop the immunity. As it gets used less, due to limited effectiveness, then it will become less of a predictor, and less bacteria will multiply with that as a trait. Its not like evolution is "free" either. Often times, if an organism becomes heavily specialized in fending off one threat, then they leave themselves open to invasive species or perpendicular threats. I firmly believe that we have intelligence (I really do) and that while natural evolution is powerful, we already have many of the tools necessary to understand, and adapt along with it. We just need to be able to understand why they're changing, how they're changing, and how we can exploit that process for our gain.
    - theorique 12y ago
      Its ok for them to not like things, just don't be a jerk about it. When I was a vegan, I would typically mention that fact, and then also add, "but I don't mind if you eat meat and I won't criticize you for it". Lots of people didn't believe me at first, having been on the business end of a lot of criticism from "well meaning" vegans and vegetarians.
    - overgryphon 12y ago
      I went vegan for a few months and abandoned it because everyone else was unable to have a conversation with me about anything other than meat. Everyone felt an unprovoked need to justify their eating habits to me. Social groups were uncomfortable picking a restaurant without asking if I was okay with it even though I would much prefer to just not eat and hang out with people. Without any comment from me, my eating habits became a constant source of discussion and concern. There just isn't any way to be politely vegan. Everyone else automatically assumes that you care why they aren't.
      - eps 12y ago
        Not eating meat is easy to understand. What throws a lot of people off is vegans, unlike vegeterians, not eating eggs and cheese. That's really a doozy. It just doesn't make sense (and not that it implies that vegans care and non-vegans don't).
        DennisP 12y ago
        Some people are vegans for health reasons, based on books like The China Study. Others just think we don't treat our egg layers and dairy cows very well. (I'm not a vegan, and don't want to get into a debate over whether they're correct. I'm just saying they have their reasons.)
        tedks 12y ago
        Cheese is made from milk. Milk is produced by mammals that have recently given birth. Cows are not an exception. Every dairy product you have consumed is built from milk stolen from a calf. That calf is immediately separated from its mother, and usually shipped straight into a veal crate. If you consume dairy you support this. The mother is milked for as long as she can be, but eventually she'll need to be impregnated again. This is a traumatic experience, but it's not like animal agriculture industry tries to make it better. The devices they use are called "rape racks" in the industry. If your vision of dairy production is a straw-hatted farmer sitting on a three-legged stool milking Ol Betsy you're delusional. But you're also pretty common. Most people have the same sort of view of animal agriculture that non-technical people have about the Cloud.
- thesimpsons1022 12y ago
  you've really never heard these claims before? they are widely accepted as fact by now. There are many sources, just take 10 seconds to google it. "its better for the environment to eat a salad in a hummer than a cheeseburger in a prius"
sschueller 12y ago
I became allergic to penicillin because of U.S meat. I ate McDonald's almost daily for about 3-4 years.
- theexpedience 12y ago
  Are you saying you became allergic to penicillin because you ate McDonalds every day for 3-4 years? I'd like to know the relationship there. I'm not knowledgeable in the area.
  - sschueller 12y ago
    Sorry, as in my reply above. This is just an assumption I have. I am in no way able to prove it or have much knowledge myself in the area.
- bryans 12y ago
  I have heard of tick bites causing an allergy to beef, and I've heard of people having reactions to meat because of a pre-existing allergy to the antibiotics used during production, but I have never heard of someone becoming allergic to an antibiotic due to consumption. That seems rather improbable, if not entirely impossible. Also, I can't imagine any medical professional claiming to possess the ability of pinpointing an instigator for the development of a penicillin allergy, because the cause is unknown. I hate to be so negatively argumentative, and I especially hate having to defend McDonald's, but I honestly think you are trying to make an association that does not exist based on information that was not factual. Or you're trolling, in which case congratulations are in order for getting me to type all of this.
  - ScottBurson 12y ago
    > I have never heard of someone becoming allergic to an antibiotic due to consumption. It may be rare, but I don't think we can dismiss it just because it's rare. Seems to me the salient question is whether any of the antibiotics that are used on livestock are even related to penicillin. I don't know the answer, but if they're not, that would certainly cast doubt on the claim.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
JoeAltmaier 12y ago
Doesn't the OP report mean its too late for this to matter? The bugs already exist.
- tomp 12y ago
  Some bugs already exist. We don't want to breed any more.
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    Moot. We have to rebuild our antibiotic-creation capability. The number of bugs is 2nd-order importance.
    - sliverstorm 12y ago
      Our antibiotic-creation ability is moot if we don't fix our anitbiotic-resistant-bacteria-creation problem. Both need to be tackled.
- ars 12y ago
  The bugs are very easy to kill - when not in a person. The bacteria are also less competitive, so all you have to do is stop using the antibiotics and you will make it less likely for them to survive in the hyper competitive farm waste. As long as you stop making them the resistance will die off as "not worth it".
- throwaway2048 12y ago
  This is completely incorrect, nations that have halted agricultural mass application of antibiotics have seen a huge decrease in antibiotic resistant bacterial present in the animals. https://www.extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/ID/ID-420-W.pdf https://www.extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/ID/ID-420-W.pdf This is because antibiotic resistance has a high biological cost to the bacteria, and they get out competed by bacteria without that adaptation when antibiotics cease being present.
ars 12y ago
> Remember, it is MORE EXPENSIVE in the long run to buy that cheap meat. When you have a routine infection that can't be cured with antibiotics This is a common misconception. You can't get antibiotic resistance from eating meat that was treated with antibiotics. The resistance occurs at the farm, and is washed into sewage etc. It does not occur in your body (from eating meat). Avoiding meat raised with antibiotics might (slightly) help slow resistance, but it won't have any direct effect on you. Remember it's the bacteria that become resistant not the person.
- chez17 12y ago
  I think you either misread my comment or I wasn't clear. Obviously you are correct, it's not that your personal resistance will increase, it's your actions that contribute to the overall resistance.
  - jcampbell1 12y ago
    Your comment was clear, but logically problematic. > When you have a routine infection that can't be cured with antibiotics, the hospital bills will be far more then the few dollars you saved. Eat less meat. It is like saying don't drive a car, because in the long run it will cause you to die of global warming.
    - zanny 12y ago
      It is a logical leap, but more appropriately: Eating factory farm meat contributes to the cultural acceptance of such goods being produced in the way they are, that produces bacterial immunities to antibiotics due to the mass utilization of factory farmed meat. And: Driving gasoline powered automobile contributes to the cultural acceptance of such goods being produced using the engine technology they are, that emits greenhouse gases that cause global warming due to the mass utilization of gasoline powered vehicles. An individual won't have a significant impact on either, but if you aren't swayed (the guy reading this on HN) we are completely fucked, because the community here is supposed to be one of the more rational and long term considerate groups of people. To expect average joe burger flipper to stop eating meat and driving cars because of the long term macroscopic ramifications of their usage is hypocritical if we don't practice what we preach.
Houshalter 12y ago
It's more expensive to society, not to the individual. And that's really debatable because the cattle are going to be fed antibiotics regardless whether you buy meat or not.
joelrunyon 12y ago
> Eat less meat. I never understand how "Stop eating factory farmed meat" means you have to "eat less meat" - why not just eat better sourced high quality meat? It seems especially strange in a place like HN where you'd think that supporting the alternative grass-fed, non-factory farmers would be the entrepreneurial thing (and encourage more farmers to do it). Meat is not the problem. The quality of the meat is. There are ways to solve that problem outside of eating less meat.
- chongli 12y ago
  why not just eat better sourced high quality meat? Because it's more expensive. Most people can't afford to eat large amounts of high quality meat.
  - Qantourisc 12y ago
    Luckily people don't need large amounts of meat.
    - toomuchtodo 12y ago
      Not sure why you were downvoted; its true, you don't need large quantities of meat in a healthy diet.
    - chongli 12y ago
      Right, I agree. I was merely responding to the parent's assertion that people just go ahead and eat as much meat as they do now but make it higher quality.
- chez17 12y ago
  In practice, when it comes to antibiotics you are correct. But lets be honest, quality meat isn't always an option, especially going out to a restaurant, so the solution in reality is to eat less meat. There's also things like land usage, water conservation, carbon footprint, health, etc... there are a lot of reasons why you should eat less meat if you live in a first world country.
- 12y ago
tokenadult 12y ago
You make a bold statement in a thread that is based on a news report passing information on a new World Health Organization report. This thread includes a link to the full report,[1] and the report is a document with a good table of contents and is a searchable .PDF document besides. So you and everyone here can check my work when I say that your statement In America, the number one thing you can do is stop eating factory farmed meat. That is a huge contributor to antibiotics resistance. goes beyond the available evidence. But props to you for saying "In America," in that statement, because it is plain that in some other parts of the world, where the problem of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is most severe, the main cause of the problem is misuse of antibiotics in human medicine rather than meat production. (India especially is an example of that kind of problem.) More details of course can be found in the report. Methinks the statement is based just a bit too much on propaganda by vegan activists. I encourage everyone in our community of thoughtful discussion here to check the fine article and the linked references before radically altering their personal diets. [1] http://www.who.int/drugresistance/documents/surveillancereport/en/ http://www.who.int/drugresistance/documents/surveillancerepo...

by chez17 12y ago

mef 12y ago

Citation for these claims? Edit: here's one article about the use of fluoroquinolones on poultry contributing to the increase of fluoroquinolones-resistant Campylobacter http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120405131431.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120405131431.ht...

chez17 12y ago
In his book "Eating Animals" Jonathan Safran Foer dedicates a lot of time to this. Remember, he is not a vegan. This shouldn't be important but there are few groups that get more irrational hate than vegans. He cites multiple studies and if you are really concerned it's a quick read. One study showed how effectiveness of a specific antibiotic was at ~99% and then only 10 years after it being introduced into livestock feed the effectiveness shot down to 80%. So we went from about a 1 in 100 chance of it not working to around 1 in 5. That is a massive and terrifying difference. I urge you to read more. Clearly this is an issue I care about. I firmly believe this is the most likely cause of my unnecessary death. Far more than war or terrorism. Protect yourself, your loved ones, your children, your grand children. Stop eating meat that is fed antibiotics.
- araes 12y ago
  "few groups that get more irrational hate than vegans" This, like most stereotypes, is built around a core of experience, and then expounded. With a lot of vegans, its often not that they're wrong about what they say, its how they convey it. This came up today in another HN discussion on smoking as well. Its ok for them to not like things, just don't be a jerk about it. On topic, while I agree that we may very well all die, this can also be looked at in a different perspective. When the antibiotic in question was first introduced, it had effectively a 5/5 chance of working. After ten years, it then had a 4/5 chance of working. Like most power laws, in maybe 10-20 years, it will have a 3/5 chance of working, ect... with a decay rate that slows with time. Like all evolution, antibiotic resistance is driven primarily by the rate of survival and reproduction in the population. If resistance against AntibioticA is a strong predictor of survival (like when its newly introduced, and highly effective), then lots of bacteria will develop the immunity. As it gets used less, due to limited effectiveness, then it will become less of a predictor, and less bacteria will multiply with that as a trait. Its not like evolution is "free" either. Often times, if an organism becomes heavily specialized in fending off one threat, then they leave themselves open to invasive species or perpendicular threats. I firmly believe that we have intelligence (I really do) and that while natural evolution is powerful, we already have many of the tools necessary to understand, and adapt along with it. We just need to be able to understand why they're changing, how they're changing, and how we can exploit that process for our gain.
  - theorique 12y ago
    Its ok for them to not like things, just don't be a jerk about it. When I was a vegan, I would typically mention that fact, and then also add, "but I don't mind if you eat meat and I won't criticize you for it". Lots of people didn't believe me at first, having been on the business end of a lot of criticism from "well meaning" vegans and vegetarians.
  - overgryphon 12y ago
    I went vegan for a few months and abandoned it because everyone else was unable to have a conversation with me about anything other than meat. Everyone felt an unprovoked need to justify their eating habits to me. Social groups were uncomfortable picking a restaurant without asking if I was okay with it even though I would much prefer to just not eat and hang out with people. Without any comment from me, my eating habits became a constant source of discussion and concern. There just isn't any way to be politely vegan. Everyone else automatically assumes that you care why they aren't.
    - eps 12y ago
      Not eating meat is easy to understand. What throws a lot of people off is vegans, unlike vegeterians, not eating eggs and cheese. That's really a doozy. It just doesn't make sense (and not that it implies that vegans care and non-vegans don't).
      - DennisP 12y ago
        Some people are vegans for health reasons, based on books like The China Study. Others just think we don't treat our egg layers and dairy cows very well. (I'm not a vegan, and don't want to get into a debate over whether they're correct. I'm just saying they have their reasons.)
      - tedks 12y ago
        Cheese is made from milk. Milk is produced by mammals that have recently given birth. Cows are not an exception. Every dairy product you have consumed is built from milk stolen from a calf. That calf is immediately separated from its mother, and usually shipped straight into a veal crate. If you consume dairy you support this. The mother is milked for as long as she can be, but eventually she'll need to be impregnated again. This is a traumatic experience, but it's not like animal agriculture industry tries to make it better. The devices they use are called "rape racks" in the industry. If your vision of dairy production is a straw-hatted farmer sitting on a three-legged stool milking Ol Betsy you're delusional. But you're also pretty common. Most people have the same sort of view of animal agriculture that non-technical people have about the Cloud.
thesimpsons1022 12y ago
you've really never heard these claims before? they are widely accepted as fact by now. There are many sources, just take 10 seconds to google it. "its better for the environment to eat a salad in a hummer than a cheeseburger in a prius"

sschueller 12y ago

I became allergic to penicillin because of U.S meat. I ate McDonald's almost daily for about 3-4 years.

theexpedience 12y ago
Are you saying you became allergic to penicillin because you ate McDonalds every day for 3-4 years? I'd like to know the relationship there. I'm not knowledgeable in the area.
- sschueller 12y ago
  Sorry, as in my reply above. This is just an assumption I have. I am in no way able to prove it or have much knowledge myself in the area.
bryans 12y ago
I have heard of tick bites causing an allergy to beef, and I've heard of people having reactions to meat because of a pre-existing allergy to the antibiotics used during production, but I have never heard of someone becoming allergic to an antibiotic due to consumption. That seems rather improbable, if not entirely impossible. Also, I can't imagine any medical professional claiming to possess the ability of pinpointing an instigator for the development of a penicillin allergy, because the cause is unknown. I hate to be so negatively argumentative, and I especially hate having to defend McDonald's, but I honestly think you are trying to make an association that does not exist based on information that was not factual. Or you're trolling, in which case congratulations are in order for getting me to type all of this.
- ScottBurson 12y ago
  > I have never heard of someone becoming allergic to an antibiotic due to consumption. It may be rare, but I don't think we can dismiss it just because it's rare. Seems to me the salient question is whether any of the antibiotics that are used on livestock are even related to penicillin. I don't know the answer, but if they're not, that would certainly cast doubt on the claim.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

JoeAltmaier 12y ago

Doesn't the OP report mean its too late for this to matter? The bugs already exist.

tomp 12y ago
Some bugs already exist. We don't want to breed any more.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Moot. We have to rebuild our antibiotic-creation capability. The number of bugs is 2nd-order importance.
  - sliverstorm 12y ago
    Our antibiotic-creation ability is moot if we don't fix our anitbiotic-resistant-bacteria-creation problem. Both need to be tackled.
ars 12y ago
The bugs are very easy to kill - when not in a person. The bacteria are also less competitive, so all you have to do is stop using the antibiotics and you will make it less likely for them to survive in the hyper competitive farm waste. As long as you stop making them the resistance will die off as "not worth it".
throwaway2048 12y ago
This is completely incorrect, nations that have halted agricultural mass application of antibiotics have seen a huge decrease in antibiotic resistant bacterial present in the animals. https://www.extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/ID/ID-420-W.pdf https://www.extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/ID/ID-420-W.pdf This is because antibiotic resistance has a high biological cost to the bacteria, and they get out competed by bacteria without that adaptation when antibiotics cease being present.

ars 12y ago

> Remember, it is MORE EXPENSIVE in the long run to buy that cheap meat. When you have a routine infection that can't be cured with antibiotics This is a common misconception. You can't get antibiotic resistance from eating meat that was treated with antibiotics. The resistance occurs at the farm, and is washed into sewage etc. It does not occur in your body (from eating meat). Avoiding meat raised with antibiotics might (slightly) help slow resistance, but it won't have any direct effect on you. Remember it's the bacteria that become resistant not the person.

chez17 12y ago
I think you either misread my comment or I wasn't clear. Obviously you are correct, it's not that your personal resistance will increase, it's your actions that contribute to the overall resistance.
- jcampbell1 12y ago
  Your comment was clear, but logically problematic. > When you have a routine infection that can't be cured with antibiotics, the hospital bills will be far more then the few dollars you saved. Eat less meat. It is like saying don't drive a car, because in the long run it will cause you to die of global warming.
  - zanny 12y ago
    It is a logical leap, but more appropriately: Eating factory farm meat contributes to the cultural acceptance of such goods being produced in the way they are, that produces bacterial immunities to antibiotics due to the mass utilization of factory farmed meat. And: Driving gasoline powered automobile contributes to the cultural acceptance of such goods being produced using the engine technology they are, that emits greenhouse gases that cause global warming due to the mass utilization of gasoline powered vehicles. An individual won't have a significant impact on either, but if you aren't swayed (the guy reading this on HN) we are completely fucked, because the community here is supposed to be one of the more rational and long term considerate groups of people. To expect average joe burger flipper to stop eating meat and driving cars because of the long term macroscopic ramifications of their usage is hypocritical if we don't practice what we preach.

Houshalter 12y ago

It's more expensive to society, not to the individual. And that's really debatable because the cattle are going to be fed antibiotics regardless whether you buy meat or not.

joelrunyon 12y ago

> Eat less meat. I never understand how "Stop eating factory farmed meat" means you have to "eat less meat" - why not just eat better sourced high quality meat? It seems especially strange in a place like HN where you'd think that supporting the alternative grass-fed, non-factory farmers would be the entrepreneurial thing (and encourage more farmers to do it). Meat is not the problem. The quality of the meat is. There are ways to solve that problem outside of eating less meat.

chongli 12y ago
why not just eat better sourced high quality meat? Because it's more expensive. Most people can't afford to eat large amounts of high quality meat.
- Qantourisc 12y ago
  Luckily people don't need large amounts of meat.
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    Not sure why you were downvoted; its true, you don't need large quantities of meat in a healthy diet.
  - chongli 12y ago
    Right, I agree. I was merely responding to the parent's assertion that people just go ahead and eat as much meat as they do now but make it higher quality.
chez17 12y ago
In practice, when it comes to antibiotics you are correct. But lets be honest, quality meat isn't always an option, especially going out to a restaurant, so the solution in reality is to eat less meat. There's also things like land usage, water conservation, carbon footprint, health, etc... there are a lot of reasons why you should eat less meat if you live in a first world country.
12y ago

tokenadult 12y ago

You make a bold statement in a thread that is based on a news report passing information on a new World Health Organization report. This thread includes a link to the full report,[1] and the report is a document with a good table of contents and is a searchable .PDF document besides. So you and everyone here can check my work when I say that your statement In America, the number one thing you can do is stop eating factory farmed meat. That is a huge contributor to antibiotics resistance. goes beyond the available evidence. But props to you for saying "In America," in that statement, because it is plain that in some other parts of the world, where the problem of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is most severe, the main cause of the problem is misuse of antibiotics in human medicine rather than meat production. (India especially is an example of that kind of problem.) More details of course can be found in the report. Methinks the statement is based just a bit too much on propaganda by vegan activists. I encourage everyone in our community of thoughtful discussion here to check the fine article and the linked references before radically altering their personal diets. [1] http://www.who.int/drugresistance/documents/surveillancereport/en/ http://www.who.int/drugresistance/documents/surveillancerepo...