‘Superbug’ scourge spreads as U.S. fails to track rising human toll

Re:‘Superbug’ scourge spreads as U.S. fails to track rising ... by alkonaut on Wednesday September 07, 2016 @12:44PM (#12444869)

This is why antibiotics use in livestock should be a top question in international trade. Not only should every country stop using antibiotics in healthy livestock, all imports of meat and animals from such countries should be banned, and to take it one step further - stop importing umbrellas and calculators from those countries too, in order to apply economic pressure.

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Re:‘Superbug’ scourge spreads as U.S. fails to track rising ... by exDM69 on Wednesday September 07, 2016 @02:19PM (#12445712)

> Not only should every country stop using antibiotics in healthy livestock

Antibiotics are not used for healthy livestock in many countries. The US is a very notable exception.

It comes down to cutting costs. In the US, it's not typical to clean the facilities between batches of animals like chicken. This mean that the new batch would contract any bacteria left behind the previous animals. It's not even that big of a cost, I'd call it borderline negligence.

I agree with you, this practice should end. Giving antibiotics to livestock at all is harmful and it should never be done as a precautionary measure.

On smaller farms, isolating or just killing the sick animals would be fine but that will not work in industrial scale.

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Re:‘Superbug’ scourge spreads as U.S. fails to track rising ... by daxorid on Wednesday September 07, 2016 @02:33PM (#12445824)

This is not the reason antibiotics are given to livestock. A wide class of antibiotics, when delivered in subtherapeutic doses, increase feed conversion efficiency and result in larger animals for the same feed inputs.

So yes, it's about costs, but not for the reasons you cite.

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Re:‘Superbug’ scourge spreads as U.S. fails to track rising ... by exDM69 on Wednesday September 07, 2016 @03:11PM (#12446234)

It's not the only reason but it is a reason.

But that's irrelevant, it's a cost cutting measure with harmful consequences to the society as a whole. The regulations and producer prices should be adjusted to make small to medium scale farming profitable and stop the antibiotics madness.

[ Parent | on HN ]