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Super Bugs and Meat

AJ Drew

AJ Drew

I am the original hippy, so of course my opinion on food is tainted by personal preference.  But on the GMO / Monsanto thread, there were a few folk who seemed very well educated in the science of GMO.  Not enough to make me love the stuff, but enough for me to think maybe the controversy is blown out of proportion.  Hoping to get those and other folk to talk about the science of super bugs n the way industry produces meat.  Here goes.

Super Bugs - As I understand it, the over use of antibiotics is creating bacteria that are antibiotic resistant.  I started reading about this after my first bout of MRSA. 

Bacteria - As I understand it, unlike a virus which has problems jumping from one species to another, bacteria is game on for anything.  If your dog can catch a bacteria then you can catch it.  Might not be an across the board truth, but I am pretty sure bacteria doesn't discriminate like a virus will.

Prophylactic Antibiotics - Our meat industry, especially chicken, are very often fed antibiotics as a preventative.  If you go buy chicken feed, unless you get the all natural stuff you can kill ducks with it because of the high antibiotic levels.  I understand the beef and pork industry does the same.  But it is really big time in chicken because they are packed to tightly into cages that without the antibiotics the mortality rate is huge.

So here is the question n hoping for a scientific response: Aren't we creating super bugs by feeding antibiotics to meat animals as a prophylactic?  If an animal is sick, by all means treat it or destroy it as necessary.  But to constantly feed antibiotics to the critters seems like we are inviting disaster upon ourselves.

Also kind of wondering if other folk think on this and try to avoid factory farmed food.
 
New Antibiotic resistant bacteria are not created by antibiotics. They are natural mutations and like all mutations most are detrimental and very few are helpful.
 
BUT bacteria have the advantage of numbers and the speed of multiplying. Several generations per day. So they have a much bigger chance of a helpful mutation occurring .
 
The antibiotics helps to eliminate the weak (survival of the fittest) and only the new superbugs survives , with no competition from it's own kind or any other organisms that would have killed it naturely.
 
So , yes you are correct , factory farms will create superbugs.
 
P.S. Humans are helping these bugs along by killing their own immune systems with sugar and starch based diets and ignoring good plant based( not necessarily vegetarian) diets.
 
Karoo, so doesn't it seem incredibly irresponsible to allow that type of meat production?  I am sure they are not devastatingly common, but it seems that if we keep producing them with factory farms that eventually they will be very common.

On eating less sugar and starch, I do not know what it is like in South Africa.  Have a friend there but the topic never came up.  Here in the US, food rich in sugar and starch is the least expensive.  Fresh produce is often out of reach of folk without their own gardens.  In lower income neighborhoods, places where people don't often have cars to shop elsewhere, the shelves of grocery stores are filled with mostly sugar and starch.  Our current First Lady has brought a lot of attention to the issue, promoting gardening and healthy living, but even a small plot is often out of the reach of lower income folk.

It is all so very sad because our inner cities often have plots of land that go unused, places that could easily be used for community gardens.
 
Hmmmmmmm.  Pretty much like flies and fleas become resistant to pesticides so too do bacteria.   Much like a horse can be injecting with increasing doses of snake venom to allow for a complete immunity, so too do bacteria become resistant.
 
It's a simple process - lower doses won't kill them - they have built up a resistance due to multiplying very quickly (essentially they are clones) and any new mutation is quickly established.
 
Sh1t man I remember when being prescribed Augmentin meant you have a hardcore serious infection.  Now they dish it out for anything.  Over-prescription of antitbiotics HAS enabled the creation of superbugs.  Evolution only takes place in response to changing environmental conditions.  Otherwise why the hell change?
 
Half the problem with poultry and livestock is the lack of genetic diversity.  Essentially they are all too similar (as a specific breed) to risk the possibility of infection - cos all of them would probably die.
 
Add to that unsanitary inhumane living conditions where welfare is not a priority and you have a catastrophic situation waiting to unfold - either which way.
 
I refuse to eat meat from factory farms.  I accept that I am in a position to make that choice - unlike millions of others.  And that is the problem - cheap protein.
 
I only eat free range grass fed beef and lamb.  I buy from a farm butchery that has it's own abbatoir.  Besides that the quality is way superior it's also cheaper - it costs me half the price as a big supermarket chain.
 
I'm with you on this one aj.  Remember the Mad Cow Disease outbreak in Europe.  First thing Germany did was fire the Minister of Agriculture and replace him with an ecologist.
 
On a national/global level
we don't have a chance. To produce cheap food for the masses people will kill the planet in the end.
By the way, Overpopulation is our biggest threat, not GMO's or global warming.
 
On a personal level,
DON"T TOUCH CARBOHYDRATES  !
 
It all boils down to the mighty Dollar, GREED, and sugar is used because its very addictive.
Once GMO seeds get into the environment, the natural plants will be wiped out, they already have that in Mexico with allot of the Heritage corn being wiped out.
 
     Feeding livestock a steady low-dose of antibiotics is one thing. But what happens later when all their untreated manure is spread on cropland as fertilizer? All those antibiotics are put in contact with soil microbiota at an even lower dose. This is a huge concern in the creation of antibiotic resistant pathogens.
 
 
 
 
edit: Not scared yet? What about the fact that bacteria can share antibiotic resistance genes via plasmids - little pieces of DNA that can be traded back and forth among bacteria of many different species. The slow evolution of mutation accumulation has nothing to do with this natural selection. These genes are pre-made by other microbes and can be instantly transferred to another - creating a new superbug, lickety-split.
 
Hybrid - I had not thought about the manure.  Was shocked to read that fresh manure is acceptable on crops as long as there is enough time before harvest.  We always age manure and I'd honestly thought that was for sanitary reasons.  Turns out, it is mainly so you dont burn your crops with too many nitrates or some such thing.  Essentially, the FDA thinks it is OK to grow potato in raw poop.  Turns my belly to think about it.
 
And don't forget the very real possibility that the next nightmare influenza outbreak will very likely originate in some godawful overcrowded poultry or swine farm.
 
Pretty interesting video about the relationships between livestock, civilization & the cause of plagues:
 
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk
 
I was really expecting the scientific type to blow the theory out the water.  Seems instead most people expect that our food suppliers are inventing super bugs.  Why are we allowing this?  If not by refusing to buy the stuff, then via insisting that the FDA make laws.

TXCG, on video wow, scary.
 
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