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Comment by chez17 | Hacker News Reader

In America, the number one thing you can do is stop eating factory farmed meat. That is a huge contributor to antibiotics resistance. Either eat mainly vegan or spend the few extra dollars to buy meat that isn't gross. Remember, it is MORE EXPENSIVE in the long run to buy that cheap meat. When you have a routine infection that can't be cured with antibiotics, the hospital bills will be far more then the few dollars you saved. Eat less meat. Oh, and you'll massively reduce your carbon footprint as well, and you'll use less land and water, and you'll be healthier (if you cut out red meat). It really is a no brainer.

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You make a bold statement in a thread that is based on a news report passing information on a new World Health Organization report. This thread includes a link to the full report,[1] and the report is a document with a good table of contents and is a searchable .PDF document besides. So you and everyone here can check my work when I say that your statement

In America, the number one thing you can do is stop eating factory farmed meat. That is a huge contributor to antibiotics resistance.

goes beyond the available evidence. But props to you for saying "In America," in that statement, because it is plain that in some other parts of the world, where the problem of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is most severe, the main cause of the problem is misuse of antibiotics in human medicine rather than meat production. (India especially is an example of that kind of problem.) More details of course can be found in the report. Methinks the statement is based just a bit too much on propaganda by vegan activists. I encourage everyone in our community of thoughtful discussion here to check the fine article and the linked references before radically altering their personal diets.

[1] http://www.who.int/drugresistance/documents/surveillancerepo...

Citation for these claims?

Edit: here's one article about the use of fluoroquinolones on poultry contributing to the increase of fluoroquinolones-resistant Campylobacter http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120405131431.ht...

In his book "Eating Animals" Jonathan Safran Foer dedicates a lot of time to this. Remember, he is not a vegan. This shouldn't be important but there are few groups that get more irrational hate than vegans. He cites multiple studies and if you are really concerned it's a quick read. One study showed how effectiveness of a specific antibiotic was at ~99% and then only 10 years after it being introduced into livestock feed the effectiveness shot down to 80%. So we went from about a 1 in 100 chance of it not working to around 1 in 5. That is a massive and terrifying difference. I urge you to read more. Clearly this is an issue I care about. I firmly believe this is the most likely cause of my unnecessary death. Far more than war or terrorism. Protect yourself, your loved ones, your children, your grand children. Stop eating meat that is fed antibiotics.

"few groups that get more irrational hate than vegans"

This, like most stereotypes, is built around a core of experience, and then expounded. With a lot of vegans, its often not that they're wrong about what they say, its how they convey it. This came up today in another HN discussion on smoking as well. Its ok for them to not like things, just don't be a jerk about it.

On topic, while I agree that we may very well all die, this can also be looked at in a different perspective. When the antibiotic in question was first introduced, it had effectively a 5/5 chance of working. After ten years, it then had a 4/5 chance of working. Like most power laws, in maybe 10-20 years, it will have a 3/5 chance of working, ect... with a decay rate that slows with time.

Like all evolution, antibiotic resistance is driven primarily by the rate of survival and reproduction in the population. If resistance against AntibioticA is a strong predictor of survival (like when its newly introduced, and highly effective), then lots of bacteria will develop the immunity. As it gets used less, due to limited effectiveness, then it will become less of a predictor, and less bacteria will multiply with that as a trait.

Its not like evolution is "free" either. Often times, if an organism becomes heavily specialized in fending off one threat, then they leave themselves open to invasive species or perpendicular threats. I firmly believe that we have intelligence (I really do) and that while natural evolution is powerful, we already have many of the tools necessary to understand, and adapt along with it. We just need to be able to understand why they're changing, how they're changing, and how we can exploit that process for our gain.

Its ok for them to not like things, just don't be a jerk about it.

When I was a vegan, I would typically mention that fact, and then also add, "but I don't mind if you eat meat and I won't criticize you for it". Lots of people didn't believe me at first, having been on the business end of a lot of criticism from "well meaning" vegans and vegetarians.

I went vegan for a few months and abandoned it because everyone else was unable to have a conversation with me about anything other than meat. Everyone felt an unprovoked need to justify their eating habits to me. Social groups were uncomfortable picking a restaurant without asking if I was okay with it even though I would much prefer to just not eat and hang out with people. Without any comment from me, my eating habits became a constant source of discussion and concern.

There just isn't any way to be politely vegan. Everyone else automatically assumes that you care why they aren't.

Not eating meat is easy to understand. What throws a lot of people off is vegans, unlike vegeterians, not eating eggs and cheese. That's really a doozy. It just doesn't make sense (and not that it implies that vegans care and non-vegans don't).

Some people are vegans for health reasons, based on books like The China Study. Others just think we don't treat our egg layers and dairy cows very well. (I'm not a vegan, and don't want to get into a debate over whether they're correct. I'm just saying they have their reasons.)

Cheese is made from milk. Milk is produced by mammals that have recently given birth. Cows are not an exception. Every dairy product you have consumed is built from milk stolen from a calf.

That calf is immediately separated from its mother, and usually shipped straight into a veal crate. If you consume dairy you support this.

The mother is milked for as long as she can be, but eventually she'll need to be impregnated again. This is a traumatic experience, but it's not like animal agriculture industry tries to make it better. The devices they use are called "rape racks" in the industry.

If your vision of dairy production is a straw-hatted farmer sitting on a three-legged stool milking Ol Betsy you're delusional. But you're also pretty common. Most people have the same sort of view of animal agriculture that non-technical people have about the Cloud.

You stopped being vegan because you wanted to. Not exactly crushing social pressures. Been vegetarian or vegan for 17 years, it is pretty easy to go have a meal with friends and be polite.

I have a feeling that the social context for veganism is extremely different, in a way that can be difficult to imagine, across different social groups (different cities, age cohorts, ethnic groups, social classes, religious backgrounds, etc.).

Most of my friends are well-educated secular urban middle-class 30-year-olds who are somewhat left-wing by U.S. standards. Most of them know dozens of vegetarians and at least several vegans. On average, they seem to view my veganism somewhere on a spectrum from "mildly eccentric" to "extremely admirable".

When I go to other countries, I'm more likely to meet people who are surprised that I'm vegan. Some of them say that they didn't know that that was possible (!) or that they have never met a vegan in person before.

I have also met some vegetarians and vegans, mostly from immigrant families, who said that they had to hide their dietary practices from their families because their families would be so upset about it. (When I went vegetarian 26 years ago, my grandmother expressed a fair amount of concern for my health, although she'd at least met other vegetarians before.)

I think it's easy to generalize from our experience about how other people "normally" react to particular dietary practices, but our experiences with people's reactions (positive, negative, confused, hostile, indifferent, curious) may be a narrow local view.

One time I had a discussion in Latin with a Catholic priest who worked at the Vatican. (I don't speak Italian and he doesn't speak English, so Latin was our best common language.) When he learned that I didn't eat animals, he cited Genesis 9:3 as a reason that vegetarianism was faintly ridiculous. It took me a minute or two to understand that he was absolutely, completely serious.

Well, I dunno, maybe you run in different circles than I do-- I have some good vegan friends, and have been vegan for periods in my past. I've had a lot of good times and meals with vegans.

But I also live in a rural Texas town, and when I was in college, yes, there were very real social pressures not to be vegan, from family to social groups.

It is easy enough to just discount these pressures, but like most choices that marginally impact the folks around you (what are you really going to order at the steakhouse where you've gone for your brother graduation? Oh you're just gonna not eat? "How fucking rude", says your uncle.) these force are real and impact folks choices.

>This, like most stereotypes, is built around a core of experience, and then expounded.

No, like other stereotypes, it is wrong, and mostly perpetuated by the same myth-engines that power urban legends.

>With a lot of vegans, its often not that they're wrong about what they say, its how they convey it. This came up today in another HN discussion on smoking as well. Its ok for them to not like things, just don't be a jerk about it.

I've had people go off on me just for saying that I was vegan. It has nothing to do with what, how, when, or why you say it; it has to do with what people hear.

you've really never heard these claims before? they are widely accepted as fact by now. There are many sources, just take 10 seconds to google it. "its better for the environment to eat a salad in a hummer than a cheeseburger in a prius"

> Remember, it is MORE EXPENSIVE in the long run to buy that cheap meat. When you have a routine infection that can't be cured with antibiotics

This is a common misconception. You can't get antibiotic resistance from eating meat that was treated with antibiotics.

The resistance occurs at the farm, and is washed into sewage etc. It does not occur in your body (from eating meat).

Avoiding meat raised with antibiotics might (slightly) help slow resistance, but it won't have any direct effect on you.

Remember it's the bacteria that become resistant not the person.

I think you either misread my comment or I wasn't clear. Obviously you are correct, it's not that your personal resistance will increase, it's your actions that contribute to the overall resistance.

Your comment was clear, but logically problematic.

> When you have a routine infection that can't be cured with antibiotics, the hospital bills will be far more then the few dollars you saved. Eat less meat.

It is like saying don't drive a car, because in the long run it will cause you to die of global warming.

It is a logical leap, but more appropriately:

Eating factory farm meat contributes to the cultural acceptance of such goods being produced in the way they are, that produces bacterial immunities to antibiotics due to the mass utilization of factory farmed meat.

And:

Driving gasoline powered automobile contributes to the cultural acceptance of such goods being produced using the engine technology they are, that emits greenhouse gases that cause global warming due to the mass utilization of gasoline powered vehicles.

An individual won't have a significant impact on either, but if you aren't swayed (the guy reading this on HN) we are completely fucked, because the community here is supposed to be one of the more rational and long term considerate groups of people. To expect average joe burger flipper to stop eating meat and driving cars because of the long term macroscopic ramifications of their usage is hypocritical if we don't practice what we preach.

It is more expensive, but as an externality. We are all going to pay for it.

He's advocating that you stop eating the meat because eating the meat supports the producers of the meat who are deciding to overuse antibiotics irresponsibly.

> Eat less meat.

I never understand how "Stop eating factory farmed meat" means you have to "eat less meat" - why not just eat better sourced high quality meat?

It seems especially strange in a place like HN where you'd think that supporting the alternative grass-fed, non-factory farmers would be the entrepreneurial thing (and encourage more farmers to do it).

Meat is not the problem. The quality of the meat is. There are ways to solve that problem outside of eating less meat.

why not just eat better sourced high quality meat?

Because it's more expensive. Most people can't afford to eat large amounts of high quality meat.

Luckily people don't need large amounts of meat.

Not sure why you were downvoted; its true, you don't need large quantities of meat in a healthy diet.

Right, I agree. I was merely responding to the parent's assertion that people just go ahead and eat as much meat as they do now but make it higher quality.

In practice, when it comes to antibiotics you are correct. But lets be honest, quality meat isn't always an option, especially going out to a restaurant, so the solution in reality is to eat less meat. There's also things like land usage, water conservation, carbon footprint, health, etc... there are a lot of reasons why you should eat less meat if you live in a first world country.

I think in this case, it's the quality of meat that's the issue. But there's another very important issue with meat: it's one of the most inefficient forms of sustenance. Animal agriculture is the single largest source of greenhouse gases - larger than the entire transport industry, including planes. It takes 11 times more fossil fuels to create 1 calorie from animal sources than from plant sources.

I'm sorry for linking to a PETA page (especially since it's a very buzzfeed-y one), but [this page][1] has links to a lot of good sources.

[1]: http://www.peta.org/features/meat-climate-change/

> I never understand how "Stop eating factory farmed meat" means you have to "eat less meat" - why not just eat better sourced high quality meat?

I do, but it means I can afford to eat far less meat. Like, twice a week. Which is fine, and also I enjoy it more[0].

Organic chicken is stupid expensive here (compared to pork or beef) and so is bacon (compared to factory bacon, which I agree is in fact stupid cheap). So I get mainly sausage and other cheaper cuts like pork belly.

But if you have the money to spend, go for it, vote with your dollars or something? :)

[0] unlike organic vegetables, the flavour difference of organic meat vs factory meat is (to me) extremely noticeable.

Doesn't the OP report mean its too late for this to matter? The bugs already exist.

Some bugs already exist. We don't want to breed any more.

Moot. We have to rebuild our antibiotic-creation capability. The number of bugs is 2nd-order importance.

Our antibiotic-creation ability is moot if we don't fix our anitbiotic-resistant-bacteria-creation problem. Both need to be tackled.

This is completely incorrect, nations that have halted agricultural mass application of antibiotics have seen a huge decrease in antibiotic resistant bacterial present in the animals.

https://www.extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/ID/ID-420-W.pdf

This is because antibiotic resistance has a high biological cost to the bacteria, and they get out competed by bacteria without that adaptation when antibiotics cease being present.

The bugs are very easy to kill - when not in a person.

The bacteria are also less competitive, so all you have to do is stop using the antibiotics and you will make it less likely for them to survive in the hyper competitive farm waste.

As long as you stop making them the resistance will die off as "not worth it".

It's more expensive to society, not to the individual. And that's really debatable because the cattle are going to be fed antibiotics regardless whether you buy meat or not.

I became allergic to penicillin because of U.S meat. I ate McDonald's almost daily for about 3-4 years.

Are you saying you became allergic to penicillin because you ate McDonalds every day for 3-4 years?

I'd like to know the relationship there. I'm not knowledgeable in the area.

Sorry, as in my reply above. This is just an assumption I have. I am in no way able to prove it or have much knowledge myself in the area.

I have heard of tick bites causing an allergy to beef, and I've heard of people having reactions to meat because of a pre-existing allergy to the antibiotics used during production, but I have never heard of someone becoming allergic to an antibiotic due to consumption. That seems rather improbable, if not entirely impossible. Also, I can't imagine any medical professional claiming to possess the ability of pinpointing an instigator for the development of a penicillin allergy, because the cause is unknown.

I hate to be so negatively argumentative, and I especially hate having to defend McDonald's, but I honestly think you are trying to make an association that does not exist based on information that was not factual. Or you're trolling, in which case congratulations are in order for getting me to type all of this.

> I have never heard of someone becoming allergic to an antibiotic due to consumption.

It may be rare, but I don't think we can dismiss it just because it's rare.

Seems to me the salient question is whether any of the antibiotics that are used on livestock are even related to penicillin. I don't know the answer, but if they're not, that would certainly cast doubt on the claim.

When I say improbable, I don't mean that it can happen but is rare. I mean it's improbable (or impossible) for it to ever happen at all, because that's just not how the body works. Allergies aren't developed by ingesting the item responsible for the reaction. The body doesn't see penicillin for the first time and arbitrarily decide to say "screw it, I'm out."

If you have a noticeable reaction, it's because your immune system mistakenly (or properly) identifies the ingested substance as harmful and is being overzealous about fighting it. But how your immune system will react to any particular foreign body is already established prior to ingestion.

So, could someone develop a more severe reaction after such prolonged exposure and stress being put on their immune system? No doubt. But the over exposure did not create the intolerance, it just temporarily exacerbated it.

All that said, I just looked up whether antibiotics from the penicillin family are used in livestock. It seems that regulations require any poisons, drugs or other contaminants with the potential to be passed to the consumer through ingestion, must both be a relatively low dosage and completely out of the animal's system prior to slaughter.

> Allergies aren't developed by ingesting the item responsible for the reaction.

Aren't they? I had no trouble finding an example to contradict you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allergy#Non-food_proteins (first paragraph)

In general I'm not aware that we know all the causes of allergies.

> It seems that regulations require any poisons, drugs or other contaminants with the potential to be passed to the consumer through ingestion, must both be a relatively low dosage and completely out of the animal's system prior to slaughter.

What do you think "completely" means? It doesn't mean zero or even "undetectable"; it means there's some threshold level, anything below which is considered acceptable.

If you trust the people who are setting those thresholds, you have a lot more faith in the system than I do.

That paragraph doesn't contradict me. The contrast in percentages is actually showing the true number of people with latex allergies. The allergy presents itself more often in healthcare workers because the prolonged exposure is exacerbating an existing mild allergy. This causes the immune system to produce and maintain a greater amount of the relevant antibodies, at which point a latex allergy test will return positive. The latex itself, however, is not what caused the allergy to develop in the first place.

As for the livestock regulations, I completely agree with you. I'm still going to eat steak every day, but I agree nonetheless.

And that couldn't happen in the case of repeated low-level exposure to penicillin? I don't see the difference.

It can happen, but increased presence of symptoms is not the same thing as developing an allergy. Exposure does not cause a nonexistent allergy to become existent, it causes a mild allergy to become an aggravated mild allergy. The allergy was already there, it just wasn't presenting noticeably until exacerbated by prolonged exposure.

For the person suffering from the allergy, this seems to be a distinction without a difference. The allergy wasn't severe enough to notice, and then later, it was.

This is really quite frustrating. This whole argument is about you clinging to this pedantic distinction between "causing" an allergy and "exacerbating it to the point that you could notice it", as if that were somehow critical, when it has no practical impact at all.

As far as I can see, nothing you've said has had anything to do with the original hypothesis. 'sschueller said "I became allergic to penicillin because of U.S meat." We have no idea whether that's true -- as 'sschueller him/herself subsequently admitted -- but I still don't see that we can dismiss it out of hand. Your argument amounts to saying that the claim can be dismissed because it was improperly phrased. That's pointless pedantry at best.

I'm sorry that you're frustrated, but it is your own fault for apparently misreading nearly everything that has been said. I plainly described relevant (and true) reasons for why sscheuller's statement was not only false but physiologically impossible. Everything I said is directly related to his statement. So your insistence that I've made no points relevant to the topic at hand is foolish, at best.

The thing you're having trouble accepting is that we actually do know that his statement is false, because it's literally not possible, because that's not a physiological thing that happens. I don't understand how many different ways I can explain this to you.

It's not pedantry, it's a pretty important distinction. Spreading the disinformation that exposure can cause the development of allergies has potential to create confusion and even be harmful to the public. Take, for instance, the anti-vax movement. It was started by small bits of disinformation and ballooned into something with deadly consequences.

You are having a semantics argument that doesn't exist. I am explaining physiology to you, which you are not accepting. So you're right, this has been pretty pointless. But that doesn't make you any less wrong.

Read my previous post again. You missed the part where I acknowledged the distinction you think I'm not getting.

Let me say this as clearly as I can. For the purpose of setting public policy on how much of what antibiotics may be used in livestock, your precious distinction is of no consequence. It doesn't matter whether exposure to low levels of penicillin, or related compounds, causes a truly de novo allergy, or merely exacerbates an existing one that was so mild as not to be noticeable. The sufferer does not know the difference, and from the point of view of public policy, either outcome, in significant numbers, is unacceptable.

If you have a counterargument to this point, make it. Otherwise I will take it as agreed.

This is really starting to feel like a Twilight Zone episode. I'm going to chronologically boil this down for you.

1. Person makes claim that an allergy was developed by ingesting meat.

2. I inform claimant that is not possible.

3. You declare that it is.

4. I debunk this declaration using well known and understood science.

5. You deny this science, while providing evidence that backs up the science.

6. I try to explain science again.

7. You change your stance from "it's possible" to "okay, it's not possible, but there's no difference."

8. I explain to you why there is a difference.

9. You not only disregard that difference, but all of a sudden decide that we're talking about public policy instead of debunking the original claim that a person developed an allergy by ingesting meat.

Do you really not see how unreasonably difficult you're being? You have twisted things at every turn.

My entire point from the beginning has been that allergies are not developed through exposure, which is a very important distinction. Just because you, personally, don't want to believe that the distinction is important, doesn't mean it isn't. Disinformation is always harmful, and I find your indifferent attitude toward perpetuating disinformation quite disturbing.

In my opinion, this is a "No true Scotsman" fallacy.

You are claiming that someone who develops an allergy must have had an allergy to start with. But the only thing that backs up this claim is your own definition.

I would suggest that allergy ought instead to have a clinical definition: if you can observe symptoms, you have an allergy. This definition is the only one that makes practical sense: if you could not observe symptoms, why would you care? The immune response definition that you give does not match up well with what medical professionals would call allergies - not at all.

It's clear that repeated exposure can cause an allergy in this sense, and you have presented no valid argument to debunk that.

Some allergies are known to be caused or exacerbated by repeated exposure, e.g. tomato allergic contact dermatitis becomes common in people who handle or prepare tomatoes for a living.

Although parent's claim is difficult to confirm, it's not impossible.

Eczema is the reaction to exposure of a substance for which the immune system is intolerant, but exposure is not the cause of the intolerance. As I explained in more detail in my other comment, over exposure to the tomato may stress the immune system to the point that symptoms become severe, but the tomato is not creating the original intolerance.

Sorry, my first post was poorly written and I should have spent some more time on it before I hit post.

This is an assumption I have which is in no way scientifically proven.

I read an article a few years ago about McDonalds drastically reducing the amount of Penicillin used in its cows which lead me to believe that my consumption prior to that may have caused it.

I may have just become allergic to Penicillin for no reason but I do find it coincidental.

It wasn't just poorly written, it was pure FUD bullshit.

We don't yet know all of the ways that allergies are "activated" but we've yet to record an antibiotic allergy developed from consuming meat. Antibiotics get metabolized by the organism they are given to, they don't get magical protection from oxidation or other chemical processes, and they sure as hell can't survive the insane heat meant to kill all living organism on it when it is cooked (especially at McDonalds).

Allergies to penicillin are extremely common.

They have nothing to do with eating meat - especially because meat doesn't have any penicillin it in.

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