The biggest issue for antibiotic resistance is farming.
Farmers use antibiotics basically by default and in large doses to avoid bacterial problems with their cattle.
I remember reading a stat that said 93% of all anti-biotics use is in agriculture.
Farmers use antibiotics basically by default and in large doses to avoid bacterial problems with their cattle.
I remember reading a stat that said 93% of all anti-biotics use is in agriculture.
On the one had it is as you said, as a preventative measure to head off infection (which is obviously very bad), but it's worse than that - industrial farmers use antibiotics so they don't have to inspect and treat each animal. Just dump antibiotics into their food and if they are injured somewhere along the way it will hopefully heal on its own. Inspecting and treating each animal individually would be a lot more expensive.
The other reason antibiotics are given to livestock is to cause weight gain. If the antibiotics cost less than the value of the extra meat produced, then you make more money.
It's a fucked up practice that we'll be all pay for in a few decades.
Note the wiki page is an ok source, but is in need of some attention from someone outside the industry.
I see some great opportunities in technology for streamlining processes behind fair and high-quality agricultural products.
Maybe the startup could manage to do it for a cost that's less than organic meat?
The reader and the software are going to be a few hundred dollars or maybe a couple thousand. But it's a one time investment, plus ongoing implants as the herd changes over time.
I suspect the main selling point is going to be the one-time capital investment aspects and the fact that antibiotics are being painted as an undesirable additive in meat and dairy. When the general public starts to dislike a substance, suppliers scramble to distinguish their products, e.g. "No added growth hormones" and the like.
This is a case where government just needs to step in and ban the practice.
If we were serious about humanity's future, antibiotics would only be given in hospitals and all of your bodily waste would be incinerated until it no longer tests positive for antibiotics. You'd leave the hospital with a shaved head too, since hair may come to contain the antibiotics as it grows.
At some point, it will become obvious enough that victims' estates will start winning lawsuits :)
Example: almost all turkey meat that's so in fashion today comes from farmers that use antibiotics as preventative measure. I personally source meat from small family run farms that adhere to biological agriculture principles, (there only ill animals get antibiotics and those aren't butchered and sold later as meat).