Here’s a factoid that left me a bit stunned when I read it: 70% of all the antibiotics used in the United States are given to livestock. That means that practically every bite of meat consumed by every person in this country has a low-level amount of antibiotic medication in it, which in turn means that we all have some amount of antibiotics coursing through our bodies pretty much 100% of the time. And THAT in turn means that all those germs and bacteria that pass through us inherit more and more immunity to those medications. So, while it’s a sound idea for your pediatrician to no longer be dispensing bubble-gum flavored amoxycillin like it was, er, bubble gum, maybe a better idea is to curb the massive amounts of antibiotics being given to cows, pigs and chickens.
That’s the point behind this piece in the Washington Post by Ezra Klein, which is where I encountered that bit of info. His point is simple: the use of antibiotics in livestock processing is a technique that allows meat producers to cram more and more animals into increasingly unhealthy conditions because they can be drugged heavily enough to curtail the rampant spread of disease that would otherwise kill all the animals and make processing less efficient. It’s not unlike those airplane seats I posted about the other day — sure, you get more bodies per square inch, but those bodies are being pushed to the limit of their endurance. Unlike that design, though, the net result of overuse of antibiotics is animal cruelty and the introduction of unwanted medication into the food supply of the entire nation.
This July post at Foodconsumer.org also looks at the problem. Sure, we don’t want to be getting sick from eating contaminated meat, but the cure is just as bad as the disease, and the problem wouldn’t exist if meat producers were compelled to employ different handling practices with their livestock.
Both articles point out that there is legislation afoot to try to curb some of this. Rep. Louise Slaughter (an unfortunate name given the circumstances) is a Democratic congresswoman from the district that includes Buffalo (!!), Rochester and Niagara Falls, and she is the primary sponsor of H.R. 1549, the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act of 2009 (PAMTA). Slaughter is herself a former microbiologist with a Master’s Degree in Public Health, so she’s informed on the subject, not just using it for political gain. PAMTA, if enacted, would compel the FDA to re-review the use of all antibiotics in food production and to begin rescinding approvals for use wherever it appears to contribute to antibiotic resistance, particularly in the seven classes of antibiotics routinely used for human medical treatment.
I think you know what I’m going to say next…if you’re the least bit concerned with public health issues related to things like the increase in cases of MRSA in hospitals, food safety, and/or animal cruelty, it’s a no-brainer to support legislation like PAMTA, so if you actually have a functioning brain perhaps you can use it to fill out an electronic “letter” to your congressional representative asking them to do the same. Your congresscritter may or may not have a working brain, but they do indeed keep track of this level of input to help them decide how to vote (as long as they don’t have a pocket full of cash from the meat processing industry). My own House rep is one of the co-sponsors of the bill, so I don’t have to worry about this one, but if yours isn’t on the list of sponsors on the bill (as seen in this PDF), you should gently nudge them.,
