Nearly 30 million pounds of antibiotics used on livestock annually in USA | Hacker News Reader

Nearly 30 million pounds of antibiotics used on livestock annually in USA

wired.com

25 pointsck210 comments

Normalize by biomass and we're probably neglecting the poor critters.

Upvoted, because from the article you cannot possibly ascertain whether this trivial counterargument would make the article disappear in a puff of smoke.

However, let me assure you that this is absolutely not the case. Food animals have been given large amounts of preventive antibiotics for decades and the resistant results of that have started biting us some time ago.

According to wikipedia there are about 96,669,000 cattle in the US, and 1,970,000,000 chickens. Compared to about 300,000,000 humans.

Food animals aren't kept alive long, but they do live at least around a year, so lets ignore births/deaths within the year.

Lets see, a chicken is about 5lb, cattle about 1600, and humans say 150.

So about 45,000,000,000 lb of humans, and 164,520,400,000 lb of food animals.

Based on that I would expect 27% of antibiotics for humans, and 73% for animals - and that matches pretty well with reality, especially considering the crude estimates I used, and completely ignoring pets.

Amazing what happens when you ignore sensationalism and do a little math. Most 'chickens', technically roosters, don't live long, only about 1 day.

http://scienceray.com/biology/the-lifespan-of-farm-animals/

Why would an animal sacrificed at an extremely young age in a farm need to receive more or less the same amount of antibiotics (normalized to its weight) in its life than a normal human being that lives many decades?

Title and article design fail. They fail to convey any information anyone can actually understand. Nobody grasps how much '30 million pounds' is, except for 'sounds like, and is obviously intended to mean, a lot'. To understand this number, we require at least:

- the average number of grams each piece of livestock gets

- the average number of grams humans get

Saying it's "80% of all antibiotics produced" doesn't add one iota of understanding, because then you need to know the ratio of livestock to humans in addition to the numbers above.

As these aren't explained in the article, the entire article is mere FUD.

Let's put it this way, how many pounds of antibiotics do you think livestock were getting 50 years ago?

(the answer is zero)

The number of drug-resistant organisms found in these situations is starting to become alarming and the EU has banned several livestock drugs years ago which are still used in the USA. But of course most countries in the EU don't use hospitals and medical treatment as a profit-center either.

I'm not arguing that the amount of antibiotics isn't a problem. My father has worked in the industry for over 30 years and has been telling me the same since 1990. That doesn't make a lick of difference, because my point is that this article isn't going to convince anyone. People will read it and may be alarmed by it, but anyone can dispel the alarm, because the people reading it haven't received any real information. That's the weakness of using FUD in your favor.

BTW, your argument isn't very convincing. How many pounds of antibiotics do you think humans were getting 100 years ago? I don't doubt you think we became healthier since then.

Your post is mostly conjecture using facts as condiments, how about we apply our critical thinking skills? It appeals to ethos and pathos and contains almost no appeal to logos.

What does the amount of antibiotics in use by farm animals 50 years ago have with whether it is a good idea to give farm animals antibiotics?

Why is it alarming? What is the number upon which 'alarm' should be sounded?

So the EU banned some livestock drugs, what does that have to do with whether we should give antibiotics to animals?

What does the corporate status (for-profit vs. non-profit vs. gov't) of hospitals have to do with whether antibiotics should be given to animals?

Lets take your 'facts' and have a little fun with them. State run hospitals incentivize death as it is cheaper to the state. Perhaps these EU countries forbid animals to receive antibiotics in hopes that their population will die before requiring medical attention or other generous state benefits. This is what happens when you leave appeals to logic and facts out of your posts.

Be sure to read the original article too

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/12/news-break-fda-est...

Oh and vegitarians can't escape this either, even in food from "organic" farms.

Liquid manure from the livestock is used on the crops and the antibiotics gets into other food that way.

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