I thought I knew what I was getting myself into when I started this project on meat and antibiotic use in animals, but what Environmental Working Group’s team found still shocked me: federal scientists routinely find antibiotic-resistant bacteria – often called superbugs – in meat I regularly buy at the grocery store. Dr. Gail Hansen, an [...]
I have a passion for pigs. It started back when I was five years-old, as I cared for the runt and orphaned pigs on our 220-acre family farm in Osage County, Missouri. From the son of five generations of farmers to a student of animal husbandry, to the owner of my own farm, I’ve always [...]
It’s not often that you get to hear a top federal health official deliberately deploy a headline-grabbing word such as “nightmare,” or warn: “We have a very serious problem, and we need to sound an alarm.” Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said both Tuesday, during a press [...]
Overuse of antibiotics in agriculture has led to many antibiotic-resistant diseases in humans. Animals aree often given antibiotics in low doses to prevent disease, (often caused by unsanitary and crowded conditions), and to aid in growth. Animals that are fed antibiotics grow faster, experiencing 4 to 5 percent more body weight, than those who don’t [...]
I am writing this blog on behalf on an important group, Supermoms Against Superbugs, as they approach their Superbugs Advocacy Day – April 16 – to bring awareness to the overuse of antibiotics. Below is a quote from them… “Doctors routinely warn patients that antibiotics should be used only to treat bacterial infections, at the [...]
As a young student studying microbiology at the University of Kentucky, I immersed myself in the study of antibiotic-resistance. When I wrote my Master’s thesis in 1954, I wrote at length about a danger that continues to be a growing threat today: antibiotics becoming ineffective against the evolution of modern disease. Even then, the laws [...]
One of the medications dispensed at the pharmacy, are antibiotics, whose invention is attributed to Fleming, but was really the discoverer? According to the Spanish Royal Academy an antibiotic is a chemical substance produced by a living or manufactured synthetically, could paralyze development of certain pathogens, for its bacteriostatic action, or cause their death, for [...]
Los antibióticos son sustancias que fabrican los microbios y producen la muerte de otros organismos (su nombre deriva del griego y significa “contra la vida”). En 1875 , el naturalista irlandés John Tyndall (imagen) descubrió el primer antibiotico, producido por el hongo Penicillium. El descubrimiento pasó inadvertido, porque en esa época se ignoraba que las enfermedades [...]
Consumers Union has taken a stand against the overuse of antibiotics in livestock production for decades – about 40 years, in fact. In that time however, we’ve seen little action by regulatory agencies or lawmakers to curb this practice that is increasingly contributing to the problem of antibiotic resistance. In light of that, Consumers Union decided to [...]
I’ve been passionate about the Supermoms Against Superbugs issue for almost a year now. The one small step I can take at home, of course, is to change the meat I buy and always look for antibiotic-free options. But at first this can be daunting. To the novice (that’s me) the search for non-industrial-farm meat seems to [...]
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