Farm Workers Carry Drug-Resistant Staph Despite Partial FDA Antibiotics Ban 120
An anonymous reader writes "New research out of the University of North Carolina now shows factory farm workers actually carry drug-resistant staph. Europe has long ago banned the use of antibiotics in livestock, but the FDA remains behind the curve with a partial ban. Thanks to large industrial farming operations, we all remain continuously at risk as our last line of antibiotics is wasted on animals."
Yea... (Score:1, Insightful)
We kinda deserve to get wiped out at this point.
Re:This is kind of fun (Score:3, Insightful)
Y'know, evolution being the path by which this happened, and americans being unable to blame it because that would aknowledge its existence
I suspect the dominant social factor is the fact that the USA lacks the will (or spine) to impose badly needed regulations if they would cut into someone's profits. Especially if that 'someone' is a whole industry.
Re:"behind the curve" (Score:5, Insightful)
This has nothing to do with pro EU or anti-US but everything with pro-shady business or anti-consumer.
Re: And this is kind of sad (Score:5, Insightful)
You seem to be missing the point. Randomly giving animals (or people, but that's harder to control) antibiotics without them needed said antibiotics will eventually create antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Your point is a typical "We can't fix everything, so let's fix nothing!" attitude I've seen applied way too often on this website.
Also, these antibiotics aren't banned. Uncontrolled administration of any antibiotic for non-medical reasons is. What would you suggest we do? Stop using antibiotics and hope not to die because of something that could've been easily treated with antibiotics but wasn't due to a fear that some bacteria will develop a resistance against it?
It's not a matter of eliminating the problem, it's a matter of controlling it, limiting it to situations where the probabiility of some mutant strain appearing is acceptable compared to death.
Who says they aren't? (Score:2, Insightful)
"Who says we are applying them randomly to livestock?"
Who says we aren't?
"Antibiotics cost money"
And minor illnesses reduce the accelerated growth that intensive animal farming is trying to do. Which loses money. Applying selectively takes time and effort and that costs money. Mindlessly mass-vaccinating is simple.
Your thinking is far far FAR too narrow. Stretch your thinking brain.