The more in depth look we take at what the companies put in our food during production the more it becomes obvious what we have on our plates isn’t exactly organic.
New Consumer Reports have raised scrutiny against antibiotic use in food production, as experts worry it will lead to a health crisis. Not a day passes by without some disturbing info about certain ingredients in our food unravels.
This time it’s the use of antibiotics in livestock that becomes dinner on a plate. Consumer Reports is worried that overuse of antibiotics raises the superbugs’ immunity and thus raises the risks for a new health crisis to develop. “Meat on Drugs: The Overuse of Antibiotics in Food Animals and What Supermarkets and Consumer Can Do to Stop It” reads Consumers Union’s latest report.
The organization is looking to have supermarkets change their meat and poultry distribution sources, hoping these companies will chose in favor of antibiotic free meat. The overuse of antibiotics in livestock might explain why antibiotics don’t seem to work anymore.
They might have been a miracle drug, but as of recent decades many bugs remain immune to ordinary or high doses of antibiotics.
In the livestock industry antibiotics are most likely the most used medicines, as producers hope pumping their animals with the drugs will get them faster to the desired weight, while keeping bugs in unsanitary facilities away.
On “CBS This Morning”, Urvashi Rangan, director of Consumer Safety with the organization, explained: “We use actually 80 percent of the antibiotics we produce in this country every year on animal production. Bacteria are becoming more and more resistant to antibiotics, making it harder to treat diseases in people”.
Rangan added the industry has created “an artificial system” as bacteria on farm are getting more and more resilient to the drug. When consumers get exposed to the treated meat, the bacteria might put them at risk from “a disease that’s resistant to being treated by antibiotics and it can become harder and harder to treat those diseases in people”.
According to the Consumer Reports’ study, if you regularly buy meat from Food Lion, Sam’s Club, Food-4-Less and Save-A-Lot then you have been serving antibiotic treated meat.
