Update: 9/10: Half of China's Antibiotics Now Go to Livestock
Newsflash, from a recent Public Radio International report: China's teeming factory meat farms have a drug problem. To make animals grow quickly under cramped, feces-ridden conditions, animals there get fed small, doses of antibiotics—creating ideal breeding grounds for antibiotic-resistant bacterial pathogens that threaten people.
A research team led by scientists from China and Michigan State University recently found "diverse and abundant antibiotic resistance genes in Chinese swine farms," as the title of the paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, put it. According to a recent analysis by a Beijing-based agribusiness consulting firm, more than half of total Chinese antibiotic consumption goes to livestock.The article points out that China is just following the US business model....
6 comments:
"My ancient & honorable ancestor's a cotton-pickin'-finger-lickin' chicken plucker; he wears a cotton-pickin'-finger-lickin' chicken plucker's hat..."
What do you think? Will there be a lot of newly minted American vegetarians in response to this news?
Arrrgggh. *Sniff* I LIKE chicken and beef and seafoodandlamband... I'm an omnivore. But I'm also not interested in being awash with Chinese sewage and toxic runoff...
I'll just have to start shooting squirrels in the neighborhood. It'll have to be real early in the morning cuz there's a law about using firearms in the suburbs...
"I'll just have to start shooting squirrels in the neighborhood."
It worked for my maternal granddad. Of course, his farm wasn't exactly urban in its location...
People have a lot of different reasons for becoming vegetarian, and not all of them involve grand, highfalutin' principles. Survival sounds like a pretty good reason to me! OTOH, some of us just don't like taking a bite out of Bambi... makes too big a mess in the mustache and beard. ;-{)>
Not to worry; I don't proselytize. Humans are by nature omnivores, and individuals become sprout-eaters by choice or by necessity.
I know :) You've teased me for suggesting chicken broth for a cold you had and such things...
I could easily eat vegetarian or even vegan... but I would rather eat a variety of things including meat and dairy etc etc. But if the fundies are right and the Rapture comes, I will eat worms along with the rest...
ellroon, at 65, I have ceased worrying that the fundies are right. :-) What we have here is probably (with high probability) all we've got and all we get... and I'm neither going to waste this life worrying about another whose existence is dubious at best, nor wander around thumping a book and telling people how they ought to enjoy this life. I am just fine with mutual tolerance, but... fuck 'em if they can't take a joke, and if there's a deity, this life must be her/his grand joke on us all!
I think you could thump several books... or thump several people with books.. but I appreciate your tolerance.
Post a Comment