Antibiotic Use in Livestock Coming Under Scrutiny
The Food and Drug Administration is calling for restrictions in use of antibiotics in animals.
Crowded and filthy conditions call for the use of the drugs to prevent illness in the animals which could be passed on to humans.
However, it seems that the antibiotics are indeed being passed on to humans and helping to create super-bugs which are becoming increasingly drug resistant.
Some 80 percent of antibiotic drugs in the United States were sold for use in food animals, according to the FDA. Many of those are used to help animals grow faster and prevent infections from breaking out on big farms. Today’s announcement on cephalosporins doesn’t affect those antibiotics in feed.
Still, the more the cephalosporins are used, the greater the chances that they will stop working because bacteria can become resistant to them.