newrepublic.com/post/181612/antibiotic-resistance-livestock-meat
American Farms Have a Drug Problem | The meat industry is pumping livestock full of antibiotics, exacerbating drug resistance in humans.
It’s welcome because there are still idiots trying to convince fools not to cut back on, or eliminate meat.
What's wrong with meat? You have an issue with people eating meats?
"What's wrong with meat?" Can you refute any of these compelling reasons to boycott animal products?
1-Your own health (vegans are less likely to get the most common chronic, deadly diseases)
2-Helping to end animal agriculture would reduce the chance of another pandemic & other zoonotic diseases
3-Helping to end animal ag would reduce the chance of the development of an antibiotic resistant pathogen.
4-Animal ag wastes a huge amount of fresh water. Each vegan saves 219,000 gallons of water every year!
5-Animal ag is a major cause of water pollution
6-Animal ag is a major cause of deforestation
7-Animal ag increases PTSD and spousal abuse in the people who work in slaughterhouses. Workers in meat packing facilities often endure terrible, dangerous working conditions.
8-Animal ag is a major cause of the loss of habitat and biodiversity
9-Needless killing of innocent, sentient beings cannot be ethically justified.
10- It is the single most effective way for each of us to fight climate change and environmental degradation.
11- Longer lifespan.
12- Healthier weight (vegans were the only dietary group in the Adventist Studies that had an average BMI in the recommended range.)
13- A healthy plant based diet significantly reduces the chances of ED later in life, and even 1 meal can improve bedroom performance
14- Vegetarians and vegans have lower rates of dementia later in life
15- A plant based diet could save money! You could reduce your food budget by one third!
16-A fully plant based diet improves the immune system according to a study published in the journal BMJ Nutrition Prevention & Health
17-A fully plant based food system would greatly reduce food borne illnesses like salmonella
18-A fully plant based food system would be able to feed millions more people. Our population is growing!
19-A fully plant based food system would save 13,000 lives a year from the air pollution caused by animal agriculture, according to a study
20- A vegan world would save 8 million human lives a year, and $1.5 trillion in climate-related costs (Oxford Study)
21- Ending commercial fishing would eliminate a huge amount of plastic pollution in the ocean. The discarded plastic nets also kill animals in the ocean who get trapped in them.
22- Commercial fishing is a direct attack on biodiversity.
23- "Fishing boats that trawl the ocean floor release as much carbon dioxide as the entire aviation industry, according to a groundbreaking study."-The Guardian
The COVID lockdowns of 2020 temporarily lowered our rate of CO2 emissions. Humanity was still a net CO2 gas emitter during that time, so we made things worse, but did so more a bit more slowly. That's why a graph of CO2 concentrations shows a continued rise.
Stabilizing the climate means getting human greenhouse gas emissions to approximately zero. We didn't come anywhere near that during the lockdowns.
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Factory farming has so many downsides, and the only reason it hasn’t been regulated into the dirt is the sheer power and money behind ag monopolies.
And consumer's insatiable demand for meat. Let's not pretend that policies which make these products more available at lower prices aren't popular.
I think price is really the key factor more so than customers being insatiable. The emphasis on chicken as a healthy meat has drastically shifted diets towards mass produced, cheap chicken meat, but even that is relatively new. It can be shifted again, but there has to be a concerted effort to make a cheap and comparable option available.
The other important point is that the explosion of factory farms is relatively recent and coincides with ag monopolies absolutely decimating the small and medium farm scene thanks to a slew of policies that directly benefit them while similar funding becomes increasingly inaccessible for smaller operations. More small farms = more regenerative practices = more locally sourced nutritional variety. That variety would make it much easier to scale back meat in diets.
Meat in any form is more expensive than plant proteins. Near universally consumers could reduce their cost of living by eliminating meat from their diet. They haven't been tricked by big ag but rather are fully complicit.
I'd also push back on the idea that small scale animal agriculture is necessarily better. Modern big ag farming has massively improved the (plant calories in)/(meat calories out) ratio as a way to reduce costs and increase yields. The main benefit of smaller scale, local animal agriculture over industrial animal agriculture is that the former just doesn't have the capacity to scale.
Meat in any form is more expensive than plant proteins. Near universally consumers could reduce their cost of living by eliminating meat from their diet. They haven't been tricked by big ag but rather are fully complicit.
One of the ironies of a country like the US -- or perhaps just an indication of how delusional we are -- is how many people blame the obesity epidemic on people not being able to afford healthy food, but we can somehow afford the highest meat consumption in the world (tied for #1 with Portugal, FWIW).
We can do that because of massive meat subsidies and some wildly lax regulations on processed food. That’s what people are talking about.
Kinda seems like all the folks who insist food deserts aren’t real or that food scarcity isn’t a thing in this country have never waited in line at a rural food pantry.
Even with the subsidies, meat is still far more expensive than plant proteins. The cheapest ground beef at my local grocery store is $5.50/pound (just checked). A can of beans is about 80 cents. But people want burgers, not beans, so they buy the beef and rationalize they can't afford healthy food.
That "local" store is 25 miles away because I live in a rural food desert, FWIW. I make the trip once a week.
I looked up the data on food deserts just yesterday. They range from a high of 17.4% of the population that are a half mile away from a grocery store (10 miles for rural), to 6.1% a mile away (still 10 miles for rural), all the way down to 1.7% for a half mile away and don't have access to a vehicle (20 miles for rural, regardless of vehicle access).
Are food deserts real? Sure they are. But they don't explain our combined obesity/overweight rate of well over 70%.
/#1 with Portugal... Of course when we are higher up on some list, it's about a bad thing, look at house prices, it's insane
Meat subsidies and lax processed food regulations in the US make processed meat much cheaper than easily prepared and/or accessible plant alternatives, not to mention the lack of education around cooking alternatives like lentils. I’m once again begging people to look up the map of food deserts in this country.
Small and middle ag are more likely to adopt regenerative practices, more likely to contribute to biodiversity, and less likely to impact ground water. That major arguments for large scale ag, that they’re more efficient and can produce cheaper food, starts to fall apart when you look at the mono-crops they’re producing and the impact on soil health. Specifically when it comes to livestock non-factory farms are far and away better for the environment. That’s not even getting into indirect emissions, which is where the impact of global logistics really gets crazy.
I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a factory meat farm or a smaller ranch. I grew up on a farm. The difference, not just for animal quality of life but for the sheer impact on soil, ground water, and biodiversity can’t be overstated. Like I can’t express how badly factory farms impact the health of local communities. If you need an example, look up the current lawsuit between citizens of Boardman, Oregon and the ag companies and livestock feed lot that have been poisoning them for three decades.
I hope you agree that a switch to exclusively small farms to produce meat Dairy and eggs would require a much smaller consumption of those products by the population. Trying to fulfill the current and growing demand with smaller Farms would require much more land and thus make the deforestation caused by animal agriculture even worse. It's currently a leading cause of deforestation, habitat loss and biodiversity loss.
This problem exists across literally every sector in the economy. There has been total corporate capture of our government. Nothing will get better under the current system because monopolies will just continue to lobby and bribe whoever they have to in order to get favorable policy and maintain their monopolies.
I’ve been heartened by the Biden admin stepping up to undercut ag monopolies by strengthening local food networks and getting serious about monopoly busting, but it needs to be far more aggressive.
There’s also the real way to start breaking these monopolies: labor rights and collective action. You show me a ag giant, especially in meat and meat processing, and I’ll show you a host of health and safety violations and worker abuses. There’s a reason why they’re so serious about union busting.
And the worse part of this is that you do not have to eat any meat to be impacted by said drug resistance (paragraph 7).
You don't have to eat meat to be impacted by the climate change empowered by meat production. The parallel is pretty tight.
Or the E. coli outbreaks that come from massive factory farm runoff.
Veganism exists. Just sayin
Read paragraph 7 😭
Yeah but too many vegans think shame alone is an effective messaging strategy, when we know that the opposite is true. It makes people more entrenched in their beliefs and turns off potential allies on the fence.
Yeah, I do think that happens and didn’t attempt to make the switch for a while due to the weird subcultural niches that can occur within veganism.
I personally accept a more flexible approach, and think any effort is worth it.
I think a bigger problem at the moment is the pro meat lobby and carnivore diet being promoted. And how it’s become part of the culture war of being “tough” and manly and all that comes from eating meat
Against the sad comedy of macho types with declining testosterone levels because of meat consumption.
Ditto all around. I was so completely put off by the culture for so long, and I see people within the ag industry who are actually allies get raked over the coals because of the idea that everything has to immediately be black and white. In reality, huge cultural and systemic changes don’t happen overnight, and like you said, they definitely don’t happen if we’re not aiming for the people who are actually causing the issues. Factory farms have exploded over just the past decade due to predatory practices and sweetheart federal policies.
Secretary Vilsack, head of the USDA, has actually spoken about this from a big vs small farms perspective. He’s called out intentional neglect and mistakes that have been made that have led to these monopolies taking hold. Looking at the guy, you’d never expect it.
factory farms are nightmare fuel
Although detailed information about antibiotic use in animals is lacking, available data show that around 70% of the total volume of all medically important antibiotics in the US is sold for use on the farm. Source (although other sources say 80%!!)
I also remember hearing that pharma for livestock does not need to be tested on humans but I can’t remember what documentary I heard that from.
meat addicts could be told it's actively giving them massive brain tumours and body-wide super-cancer and they'd still eat it. "but it tastes sooo good, I could never go without meat!!" they'd say.
The negative health effects of excessive meat consumption are extremely well established but we have people on YouTube screaming that the real cause is not enough meat. It’s sickening the amount of disinformation being pumped out.
butchering living things for food in this day and age is barbaric.
meat is murder.
It is truly disgusting and abhorrent, I agree. The only situations where it is even remotely close to being acceptable is in the name of survival out of desperation. Industrialized animal agriculture is torture and killing for pleasure, full stop.
Everything is murder.
so wise
Calling them “meat addicts” is definitely going to win hearts and change minds, for sure.
It's not an exaggeration, though. Meat contains albumin which activates the same receptors in the brain as opioids. Not to mention a number of other chemical acids that react with the brain the same way speed and caffeine do. These effects are obviously less pronounced than those drugs, but it's a fact they are addictive substances regardless. If you cut meat consumption, you'll crave it less. Self-acclaimed "carnivores" are addicts and I won't mince words about it, especially given the immeasurable suffering that meat production results in.
At any rate, when I'm actually talking to someone to try to change their mind about their meat consumption, I try to use less accusatory terminology.
Seems like at a certain point, you have to ask yourself what the ultimate goal is and whether you’re moving towards that or pushing people away. You can spew this stuff at folks if it makes you personally feel better. That is your right. But if the actual goal is to create systemic change and shift public opinion, dehumanizing or shaming people isn’t going to get us there. That’s just how people work.
And whether or not you’re addressing them directly, they’re still reading what you say.
You can put regulations in place all day and all night to try and improve the quality of life for livestock, but at the end of the day, billions are still raised brutally and recklessly slaughtered for food that isn't nessecary to humanity. There's not a nice way to state that truth. If a meat eater cannot level with someone on the reality of adverse health effects of consuming meat, the damage to the environment, and the grotesque, unethical, and inhumane nature of raising animals for slaughter, there's little else that can be said to them to change their minds. Either they argue in good faith with a genuine interest in changing their diets, or they argue to say "LOOK EVERYONE, IT'S THE VEGAN, LAWL."
I see your point to a degree, though. For me, commenting to start a thread is not the same as actively responding to people who are already having a discussion within an existing thread, if you get what I mean? A more abrasive lead-in to a controversial topic tends to get more engagement than a lukewarm one, but I have no reason to be purposefully dehumanizing to someone when I'm actually discussing the topic in a good faith, one-on-one with another person.
It doesn't change the fact that the points of contention all involve calling them out on the harm that results from their dietary choices - there are no other arguments to be had on the matter. There's no polite and pleasant way to tell someone their meat eating contributes to immeasurable suffering, adverse health affects to themselves, and damage to the planet all for the sake of their personal pleasure. People will never like to hear that, even if you coat it with the sweetest sugar known to humankind.
I'm vegan and I agree with you. I think a lot of times we get caught up in being right instead of doing what's best to help the cause. But I can totally empathize with the people who draw a hard line.
Plant lives matter
Factory farming is a predictable response to intense demand pressures. Demand for meat is directly related to wealth. In the past, only wealthy people could afford meat. This is still true today. As developing countries increase the size of their middle class, those people can now afford more meat. This is why demand for meat has skyrocketed in countries like India and China. Also, meat costs more today adjusted for inflation than it used to, mainly because there are more people wealthy enough to afford it regularly and so demand is sky high. The only real way to fix this is to make people poor again or artificially make meat even more expensive (it already costs way more per calorie than grains). Good luck getting people to support either of these options.
This is just another of many side effects of the fossil fueled wealth explosion that has occurred since the industrial revolution.
I'm curious if drug resistance would slowly dissipate if we stopped over-using antibiotics. Is there evolutionary pressure to not be overly resistant as a bacterium?
slowly dissipate
Takes more chance to grow a resistance than to loose it. So once resistance to a substance exists, a reduced chance to encounter it can suffice to keep the resistance. For lifestock diseases, a lot more depends on the habitat of the host, and changes therein.
evolutionary pressure
Resistance requires the crafting of tailored molecules. Each feature brings its own costs and is a tradeoff between pros and cons.
I am no expert, but it probably takes more energy for the bacteria to be resistant to antibiotics, which would mean that in an environment with less antibiotics a non resistant bacteria would reproduce slightly faster.
And all these yahoo's are worried about getting vaxed?
Eating meat now is an exercise in cruelty.
And selfish, vapid stupidity - it’s literally hastening our own extinction
End animal ag.
What isn't the meat industry doing to ruin our lives?
They're promoting antibiotic resistance in bacteria. They're one of the major driving forces behind deforestation and biodiversity loss around the world. They contribute 14.5% of all global greenhouse gas emissions. They're practices of keeping animals in cramped, stressful, and unsanitary conditions create breeding grounds for pathogens that could lead to the next pandemic. And, they've created a system of mass suffering that dwarfs even the worse atrocities humanity has committed against itself.
With all of this in mind, the meat industry continues to enjoy widespread support from our population. Ignorance is absolutely a factor, but given the vitriol that so many reply with when faced with these facts, I'm beginning to think psychopathy is more widespread among our population than previously thought.
The COVID lockdowns of 2020 temporarily lowered our rate of CO2 emissions. Humanity was still a net CO2 gas emitter during that time, so we made things worse, but did so more a bit more slowly. That's why a graph of CO2 concentrations shows a continued rise.
Stabilizing the climate means getting human greenhouse gas emissions to approximately zero. We didn't come anywhere near that during the lockdowns.
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Time to go vegan, and stop our financial contributions to this barbaric way of life.
We’re not in medieval times anymore, and grocery stores are full of nutritious and cheap plant food.
Cmon
I am trying but plant based stuff is more expensive in my country 😞
Just go read about the stories of the vultures being wiped out in India
You would think after an entire lifetime some would have looked into regulating this.
Whoopsie
Have they though? There isn’t any trend in antibiotic resistance that can be traced to animal exposure. In fact livestock animals are not allowed many types of antibiotics to make sure resistance doesn’t develop.
The article is purely speculative and offered no data
You need a little tetracycline in the blood to get the perfect sear on that steak. Augmentin is the sweet'n'low of steak seasonings.
Decades old news but absolutely worth repeating.
Factory farming has created a nightmare. Small farmers who sell beef are doing it such a price that it’s prohibitive and many consumers can’t afford it, (which yes, for those that can, limits consumption!).
Small farmers trying to care for animals well (and many heritage breeds of animals exist to this day only because of farmers or hobby breeders) who only use antibiotics when needed (say an animal is actually ill), also struggle because we get railed again by everyone who wants to just scream against us for daring to raise animals at all.
I’m against factory farming, and we should all eat less meat, because if we are going to eat any at all we should be respectful and kind to the animals we consume.
I’m in my 50’s now and I have literally never stopped hearing this.
Now it gets shipped to China and Vietnam to get “processed”. They inject it with water and red dyes and preservatives. And don’t get me started on the eggs.
Support your nearest farms and ranches using sustainable and humane practices. Get the monthly or weekly veggie box or meat delivery. Or get a $200 top load freezer and order a half animal from a ranch at the beginning of the season so they can really get out in front of managing their herd and give you a great deal on the best meat.
If you think you can’t afford to do this, there are tons of farms that will let you come work a day or two a month to supplement your contributions… and your soul.
As long as corporations control our food supply, and our government regulators remain in their pockets, our food will continue to be used to extract wealth, services, and compliance from us… regardless of how many of us our corporate overlords have to sacrifice.
Before WWII began 48% of American workers listed themselves as working in agriculture or the food supply chain in some related way or another. Today that number is 15%.
Victory gardens were a very big thing.
If we turn our backs on the life these corporate pigs are selling us and get back to the one they have stolen/hidden from us we can ride out this depopulation event with some grace and leave this planet to heal with our humanity intact.
Hello 2005 headline. Come here often?
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As if this is news. It's been going on for literal decades, much like the climate change to which factory farming greatly contributes.