http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/17/opinion/antibiotics-in-liv...
It's even more astonishing that a reputable news organization like the BBC would do a story on it and not mention livestock. It would be like doing a story on global warming and not mentioning carbon emissions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/12/us/antibiotics-for-livesto...
I know antibiotics are a public health problem, but I'd personally be pissed if I needed to pay extra for the drugs and a vet's involvement for such a simple thing. We're talking $6 or so for the meds I mentioned earlier. How much does the average farm vet house call cost? Beats me, but I'm not anxious to find out, and it might be better to put down an animal than shoulder such expense.
The FDA (or maybe that would be the USDA?) would be better off to simply ban sale of animal products with any measurable trace of antibiotics. Period. That would certainly cause a major upset in the industry as we know it, but the living conditions of commercially-raised meat animals is appalling and could use the change.
PS: There is a finite amount of discoverable antibiotics FOR ALL TIME. Without a long term replacement or human extinction any and all systimatic use of antibiotics on animals will lead to significant human casualties (as in millions to billions of human lives.) Granted most of these people have not been born yet but it's way more important than a lot of other hot button issues.
Besides, many say it's too late. Resistance genes are in the wild and bacteriophages will spread them. Nothing can prevent that. Banning it's use on livestock at this point will most likely be an exercise in futility, like shooting the evil queen after eating the poisoned apple.
In order to kill the resistance of the existing bugs we'd need to start letting people die from both kinds of bacteria, resistant ones and non-resistant ones, so that the energy efficiency the non-resistant ones gain very slowly wins out over the advantage of treatment resistance that the resistant ones have. If any small subset of humans for any reason deviates from this, it negates the effects, so effectively you cannot have even a small country disagree. Nor can you get away with only treating the rich. Not for a year or two, but likely for centuries. And even when that does happen, you still have to limit usage of the drugs.
Please note that it isn't necessarily so bad. Viruses have won the resistance battle against medication decades ago, and aside from a few incidents, effects have been relatively limited. There has not been an even medium-scale pandemic. But there are quite a few viruses where getting infected means it's curtains, and no treatment is possible. One particularly scary one is rabies. Fortunately, inoculation still mostly works, with only a few exceptions (like HIV).
We've lost this battle, let's just move on.
Second it's not an all or nothing story. We use far more antibiotics on Animals than people and that's a huge issue because it's eroding effectiveness not simply creating a single super bug that will now rule for all time.
Not to mention this will prolly raise the price of your favourite horse, errm.. beef burger at the local supermarket. :-)
(sorry)
I could be wrong since this is way out of my areas of interest, but AFAIK it has nothing to do with fighting off infections.
The majority of cattle which end up in a grocer, convenience store, or restaurant spent most of their life completely infested with E. coli. Right up to the point of being thrown into the grinder.
I wouldn't read that article as serious journalism.
In many countries, antibiotics are sold over the counter and/or given as placebo to patients who visit the doctor with a virus infection.
This is a prime example of a tragedy of the commons: you can be as careful as you want in your use of antibiotics, but that will not help much if others are breeding resistant strains. For an example, look at the map at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methicillin-resistant_Staphyloc... or at the data in http://www.sante.public.lu/publications/rester-bonne-sante/m... and compare Scandinavia and, to a lesser extent, the Netherlands and Germany with other EU countries.
Someone has to formulate a specific policy and then get it through the House/Senate sub-committee if they want funding. In a period where there is a strong tide against all goverment spending and some very anti-science people that are key in the process I'm not hopeful that a solution will come up soon.
And it works.
EDIT: Actually, Norway's success in reducing resistant infections is due to their limiting of antibiotics use in humans.