The Use of Antibiotics in Cattles, Pigs and Chickens May Increase the Spread of Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria

In today's generation, there are people who choose to give up eating meat. They explain this bold move as their own way of respecting the lives of animals. But there are still those who still enjoy a big juicy steak after a long hard week. However, there are a number of concerns people have on the drugs used in animals.

A couple of scientists, lawmakers, and public health promoters expressed their concern about the effects of using antibiotics in the food that we eat. In the years between 2009 and 2014, The Pew Charitable Trusts pointed out the unusual rise in the sale of antibiotics in the United States. Now, the U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA) claims that the same antibiotics doctors give their patients are also given to healthy animals at an alarmingly rates. This is the reason why these animals grow faster than their growth rate. This is also to compensate for the overcrowded conditions in almost all the farms in the United States. But the real question people want to know is, what are these antibiotics going to do to our body?

"Dangerous overuse of antibiotics by the agricultural industry has been on the rise at an alarming rate in recent years, putting the effectiveness of our life-saving drugs in jeopardy for people when they get sick," Avinash Kar, senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Forbes.

Animals that have been given antibiotics breed a much bigger livestock; they also produce resistant strains of bacteria that end up infect people that eat it. However, the agribusiness contends that statement and says that the action is very important to keep the cattle, pigs, and chickens healthy while satisfying meat-eating customers.

However, there seems to be an inverse relationship between the farm animals raised in the U.S.; it was found that although there is an alarming increase in the sale of antibiotics, the total number of cows and pigs fell while the number of chickens remained the same. One theory experts are looking at is that the agroindustry is more dependent on antibiotics to keep animals healthy for meat consumption.

In 2011, there were only 7.7 million pounds of antibiotics used to treat sick people in the United States, while there was a grand total of 29.9 million pounds that were used to fatten up farm animals and make sure they don't have and spread diseases. However, that is still 3.9 times more number of antibiotics used in animals than humans. On 2014, the "medically important" antibiotics mixed with animals feed increased by 3% in a year

Despite the FDA announcement about a new Guidance for Industry the year before, this incident still happened. The new Guidance basically asked pharmaceutical companies to take-out all growth-promotion claims on important antibiotic drugs. Following and limiting the use of these medically important drugs is a big factor in containing the problem, because it simply means that the drug is used solely to treat humans, the FDA said.

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