Genetic Pollution Epidemics - from a CAFO near you?

From the pages of Keep Antibiotics Working:

On Antibiotic Resistance

Throughout America, infectious diseases are emerging that we may not be able to cure because bacteria have become resistant to antibiotics.

Over the last 60 years, effective antibiotics have turned bacterial infections into treatable conditions, rather than the life-threatening scourges they once were. The effectiveness of many life-saving antibiotics is, however, waning. Health experts have deemed the rise in antibiotic resistance a public health crisis. Everyone is at risk from antibiotic-resistant infections, but children, seniors, and people with weakened immune systems are particularly vulnerable.

The overuse of antibiotics is to blame. A major source of this overuse is routine use of antibiotics as feed additives for livestock and poultry – not to treat disease, but instead to promote growth and compensate for crowded, stressful, unsanitary conditions. The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that 70% of all antibiotics in the U.S. are used as feed additives for pigs, poultry and cattle. In June 2001, the American Medical Association went on record opposing the routine feeding of medically important antibiotics to livestock and poultry (i.e., "nontherapeutic" use).

Antibiotic use in animal agriculture has been linked definitively to human bacterial infections resistant to antibiotics. Mounting evidence suggests that widespread overuse of agricultural antibiotics also may be contaminating surface waters and groundwater, including drinking water sources in many rural areas. Nonetheless, agribusiness and the pharmaceutical industry are fighting hard to thwart restrictions on the use of antibiotics in agriculture.

• Antibiotic Resistance Generally
• Agricultural Use of Antibiotics and Antibiotic Resistance
• Evidence for Resistant Bacteria Transferred from Animal Agriculture to Humans
• Evidence that Livestock Drug Use Puts Farmers and Rural Residents at Increased Risk for Resistant Infections and other Health Hazards
• Evidence that Resistant Bacteria Lead to Increased Illness and Poorer Health Outcomes
• Resistant Bacteria, Antibiotics & Resistance Genes in Food, Water, Air, and Earth
• Transfer of Resistance Genes Between Bacteria
• Reversal of Antibiotic Resistance
• Alternatives/Complements to Agricultural Use of Antibiotics

Spread the Word. Tell friends and family what you have learned about how the overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture impacts human health. Urge them to visit our website and to Take Action on this important issue.