Farmers’ Gifts

Every time, when you choose meat, what do you looking for? Everyone is looking for is the fresh meat, how much fat on it, how much cholesterol is there per serving, and how much protein inside. You could get not only what you see but also could get some special gifts, which people may not like, from the farmers. Those gifts are antibiotics and their friends, resistance bacteria. They could affect people’s health condition a lot but you could not know from meat’s appearance and nutrition fact list. However, those unobserved microorganisms would not mean they are not important. In fact, antibiotics use in livestock could affect livestock’s and human’s health and socioeconomic system.

According to Bud (2005), “The discovery of an antibacterial factor in the exudates if the Penicillium mould by Alexander Fleming in 1928 was therefore not totally unexpected…but two new developments in the late 1930s engendered more enthusiansm for the antibiotic approach to medicine….Erythromicin and vancomycin were developed by Eli Lilly in the 1950s…Some of these, such as ampicillin (1961) and later amoxicillin, were broad-spectrum like tetracycline. Before even ampicillin, however, in 1960 Beecham and Bristol brought out meticillin (methicillin)”(paras. 3,12,13). In the past, antibiotics really had high cure rate. Unfortunately, now they cause a big problem: “resistance”. “Antibiotic resistance is the ability of bacteria or other microbes to resist the effects of an antibiotic. Antibiotic resistance occurs when bacteria change in some way that reduces or eliminates the effectiveness of drugs, chemicals, or other agents designed to cure or prevent infections. The bacteria survive and continue to multiply causing more harm” (“About Antibiotic Resistance” 2006, para. 3). It means when the farmers use antibiotics in livestock carelessly, the resistance will happen easily. Moreover the resistance bacteria transfer from livestock to human by eating. When a person eat meat which has resistance bacteria and gets ill, this person may has problem with antibiotics therapy (“Antibiotics Debate Overview” 2008, para. 4). Now, when we use more and more antibiotics in livestock, we are making more and more resistance germs. In the future, antibiotics will not work.

First, misuse antibiotics in livestock would make veterinarian misdiagnosis or delay the best time to treat livestock. For example, when farmer treats cow’s diarrhea by antibiotics, it could delay the best time to treat food poisoning. Diarrhea is one symptom for food poisoning and it also is the first symptom. If veterinarian could treat food poisoning as soon as he or she can, the complications could be less and the healing could be easier. However, if farmers just treating the diarrhea, it will hides the real problem. In addition, misuse of antibiotics could cause antibiotics resistance by overuse. For example, when one of cows has an infection, the farmers may feed all cows antibiotics to prevent them getting infection. It could cause the bacterium became resistance bacterium. To misuse antibiotics in livestock could just kill livestock by misdiagnosis, but resistance which is caused by overuse could kill people.
Second, using antibiotics in livestock influences human’s health because they eat the meat. Human could get resistance bacteria by eating livestock. For example, when human eat the meat, which had resistance bacterium for penicillin, the resistance bacteria could into human’s body. If human get sick by this resistance bacterium, the penicillin will not work on this person (“Antibiotics Debate Overview” 2008, para. 4). However, the resistance bacteria are not just making people sick, it also could kill people. According to Wegener (2005), “These bacteria (Salmonella and Campylobacter) cause an estimated 200 million infections, primarily diarrhea, worldwide each year; most of these infections originate from animals” (para.4). In addition, people who have allergy to antibiotics would also have allergy for the meat that has antibiotic inside. For example, a patient who has allergy by penicillin would have allergy for the meat, for livestock which were fed by penicillin. Using antibiotics in livestock is a kind of poison for human’s health and even it will kill humans.

Finally, using antibiotics in livestock would affect social-economy by two ways. One is farmers use a lot of antibiotics in livestock. According to “ Abuse of Antibiotics at Factory Farms Threatens the Effectiveness of Drugs Used to Treat Disease in Humans”(2007), “Twenty-five million pounds of antibiotics are fed to American livestock annually” (para. 3) If farmers can save this money, they could modify their livestock to produce better offspring and products such like milk and cheese. The other is the huge amount of money used to treat resistance bacteria. Today, we have more and more resistance bacteria around the world. In the other words, more and more antibiotics are losing their efficacy in people. “As the result, for example, increased drug resistance has raised the annual national cost of treating ear (human’s) infections by an estimated 20 percent, or $216 million” (Laxminarayan, Malani, Howard, & Smith, 2007, p. 7). If we can save that money which is spent on antibiotics use and research, we could improve our social services and medical care.

Opponents of anti-using antibiotics in livestock claim that antibiotics could help them take care livestock easier and also can get more produce such like milk and eggs. However, it is a wrong and old opinion. Using antibiotics in livestock is not necessary. According to Wegener (2005), Europe-wide farmers have stops using antibiotics in livestock for five years. During these years, the farmers just had a few and not serious problems and also have increased their produce. This new agriculture revolution could be a better way to care for livestock than feeding them antibiotics which the farmers used in the past (para.7). As the technology keep developing, some old and no longer useful agricultural method like using antibiotics in livestock should be replaced.

In conclusion, these days, the public may not pay attention to how to use antibiotics or how many antibiotics they have misused. However, in the medical systems, which include human and animal, the scientists and doctors are facing a serious problem: antibiotic resistance. If people could not stop using antibiotics to cure diseases, in the least, people should avoid taken any extra and unnecessary antibiotics. This is the only way to reduces or moderates antibiotic resistance In our environment, people were suffering from many toxins like water and air pollution, and global warming. So, why people are still want to find the other way to poison their health condition by using antibiotics in livestock. People should think serious about our food; antibiotic free livestock could be a beginning. Health is the worthiest property that everyone should have.