The mystery started the day farmer Russ Kremer got between a jealous boar and a sow in heat. The boar gored Kremer in the knee with a razor-sharp tusk. The burly pig farmer shrugged it off, figuring: "You pour the blood out of your boot and go on." Full Story »
Posted by Dwight Rousu - via Google News (Health)
Informative, well sourced article about various aspects of and consequences of our food production. The story is well sourced and puts dangers, interests practices and consequences into context and even hints at alternatives.
Antibiotics are a controversial subject, not only for the general public but for everyone involved in directly dealing with them, from doctors and veterinarians to farmers, researches and of course the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. Needles to say, the stakes are high. Powerful financial interests yet again conflict with ecological and health concern. While food and the safety of our food supply "should" be on everyone's mind, the industry has done a great job keeping the ... More »
I was glad for the farmer's quote at the end. The industries involved always cry about how much it will cost them and how much more expensive our food will be. Experience usually proves them wrong. This piece is not as in-depth as the one TIME magazine did a few months ago. But it reaches the same conclusions.
The issue of the misuse of antibiotics in animal feed (as prophylactic against disease and to help animals gain wait faster) is not new, but this is an interesting and satisfying piece because it focuses on the story of one hog farmer's transformation from traditional to antibiotics-free. As a public health issue it's open and shut - the wanton use of antibiotics in animal feed should immediately be banned. But it's the same story of special interests (drug companies, big agriculture) controlling the government at the expense of the public good. There is room for incremental change and articles like this may help make it happen.
A very good story that captures the dangers of feeding huge amounts of antibiotics to the animals and fish we eat. The story fails to mention the growth hormones that are fed to the animals, and their confluence into the environment.
The animal had been fed low doses of penicillin, spawning a strain of strep that was resistant to other antibiotics. That drug-resistant germ passed to Kremer. More »
I don't eat meat and only drink or cook with milk from cows not treated with rsb (which requires that they also get more antibiotics). The factory mentality gives cause to torture animals and makes us sick as well.
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