I listened to this interesting story on NPR this morning, Antibiotic Use On The Farm: Are We Flying Blind?
It is undenaible that massive use of antibiotics occurs on the farms and that it is just a given in most agricultural schools of thought this is a necessary and good thing. It probably is necessary if for no other reason than the conditions industrialized agriculture houses animals in, an unnatural and unhealthy environment being fed unnatural feed. The reward at the end for this is "cheap" food for Americans, resulting in American families spending less of their income as a percentage on food than ever before in history.
Is this bad? It it nothing to worry about? I am not sure but even as someone who is not an eco-nut or alarmist I think there are legitimate and serious concerns about the massive and often preemptive use of antibiotics in our food system. The story is brief, give it a listen and see what you think. At the very least it should encourage you to think more about where your food comes from and how it got there.
3 comments:
It's not just animals.
I grow (actually that should be past tense, sadly) pear trees. When I planted them, I was not aware to what extent the Midwest pear orchard had been annihilated by the bacterial infection known as fireblight. That disease turns a healthy tree into a dead, blackened stick. It looks like someone torched your orchard.
Fireblight killed almost all the pear trees I planted. And these were grown trees running up to 18 feet high, not saplings.
The problem? They've been fighting fireblight so aggressively in the Midwest that it's almost totally resistant to all applicable antibiotics. The result is that the pear orchardist is no longer growing pears because they all died.
I have apple trees on my property too, but they are fireblight resistant cultivars and have weathered what killed the pears. No species of pear tree shows the same level of fireblight resistance that some other fruits trees do though.
The thing about animals is that they mature quickly. A dead pear tree is not easily replaced since it takes at least 8-9 years before it shows decent fruit production. Given that fireblight is now antibiotic resistant, it looks like pears will no longer be on the menu, at least around here.
Arthur,
I as well, "as someone who is not an eco-nut or alarmist I think there are legitimate and serious concerns about the massive and often preemptive use of antibiotics in our food system". We proved, many years ago that these, so-called, "growth promotants" set us up for a fall.
Dan, that is a good point. Fruit trees are a very long term investment. You can replace a lost litter of pigs pretty quickly but you can't replace a mature fruit tree the same way.
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