Factory Farming Is Manufacturing Superbugs -- and Endangering Us All

[drokhole]

Here is a news story that could determine whether you live or die. Many of the world's scientists are warning that one of the mightiest weapons doctors have against sickness is being rendered useless -- so a few people can get richer, for a while. If they aren't stopped soon, the World Health Organization warns we are facing "a doomsday scenario of a world without antibiotics". It will be a world where transplant surgery is impossible. It will be a world where a simple appendix operation will be as routinely lethal as it was in 1927, before the discovery of penicillin. It will be a world where pneumonia and TB and gonorrhea are far harder to deal with, and claim many more of us. But it's a world that you and I don't have to see - if we act on this warning now.
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In the United States, Latin America, and Asia, animals being farmed for meat and milk are being automatically given antibiotics in their food all day -- irrespective of whether they are healthy or sick. It's like slathering your child's Cornflakes with antibiotics, all year round. Some 80 per cent of all antibiotics in the US go straight into farm animals. This speeds up the race massively. It's like taking bacteria to the gym and giving them a constant work-out -- and then unleashing them on the rest of us.
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This process partially explains the evolution and spread of many superbugs. Only a fortnight ago, a new strain of MRSA was found in British milk that could be transmitted to human beings. To some degree this arms race is an inevitable part of nature - but our factory farms are massively artificially accelerating it. They are bringing the day when antibiotics won't work much closer.

Why? Why would factory farms automatically feed antibiotics to healthy animals, given the obvious risk? If you cram animals together, give them little room to move, and make them grow and produce far beyond the level they would in natural circumstances, they will routinely get ill -- and they do. It is cheaper for their owners to simply automatically and preemptively drug them all, than to try to treat their illness individually, or to create an environment where sickness is not standard...

more at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/factory-farming-is-manufa_b_878872.html


This is the kind of stuff that affects us all, and is routinely ignored. Whether we like it or not, our food supply is slowly poisoning us, regardless of whether or not we're careful to avoid processed foods laden with refined carbohydrates and high fructose corn syrup. Our bodies are food processing machines, and what's on our plates is our raw material. Beyond its effects on our physical health (obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc...), poor nutrition plays a huge role on our mental health as well. Here's a fantastic documentary on the matter that has recently been playing on the Documentary Channel:

Feed Your Head
http://store.documentarychannel.com/Feed-Your-Head-p/1065.htm

Yet, with all this is mind, we get more and more news stories like this:

House GOP Puts Food Aid, Food Safety on Chopping Block
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/06/house-gop-puts-food-aid-food-safety-chopping-block

I honestly don't know, anymore. Between this, and the "keep your hands off our french fries" nutbags, it seems more and more hopeless like things will change any time soon. I guess as long as people can take a pill to mask the effects of unhealthy eating (a "bail out," as one interviewee put it in Feed Your Head), people will be even more slow to change (while Big Pharma profits enormously in the process). And, on that sunny note of pessimism, here's one more fantastic (and disheartening) account detailing one of the worst culprits in the Western Diet:

Sugar: The Bitter Truth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

[pipi_k]

1. There's another problem too...

People who demand antibiotics for things that are viral (against which antibiotics are useless) and...even more disturbing...cowardly or greedy doctors who give patients what they want.

Knowing...or not knowing...that they are helping to create frightening Superbugs.

[drokhole]

2. An interesting article on the advent of agriculture and its far-reaching consequences...

http://www.mnforsustain.org/food_ag_worst_mistake_diamond_j.htm

"To science we owe dramatic changes in our smug self-image. Astronomy taught us that our earth isn’t the center of the universe but merely one of billions of heavenly bodies. From biology we learned that we weren’t specially created by God but evolved along with millions of other species. Now archaeology is demolishing another sacred belief: that human history over the past million years has been a long tale of progress. In particular, recent discoveries suggest that the adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered. With agriculture came the gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and despotism, that curse our existence.

At first, the evidence against this revisionist interpretation will strike twentieth century Americans as irrefutable. We’re better off in almost every respect than people of the Middle Ages, who in turn had it easier than cavemen, who in turn were better off than apes. Just count our advantages. We enjoy the most abundant and varied foods, the best tools and material goods, some of the longest and healthiest lives, in history. Most of us are safe from starvation and predators. We get our energy from oil and machines, not from our sweat. What neo-Luddite among us would trade his life for that of a medieval peasant, a caveman, or an ape?
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Besides malnutrition, starvation, and epidemic diseases, farming helped bring another curse upon humanity: deep class divisions. Hunter-gatherers have little or no stored food, and no concentrated food sources, like an orchard or a herd of cows: they live off the wild plants and animals they obtain each day. Therefore, there can be no kings, no class of social parasites who grow fat on food seized from others. Only in a farming population could a healthy, non-producing élite set itself above the disease-ridden masses. Skeletons from Greek tombs at Mycenae c. 1500 B. C. suggest that royals enjoyed a better diet than commoners, since the royal skeletons were two or three inches taller and had better teeth (on the average, one instead of six cavities or missing teeth). Among Chilean mummies from c. A. D. 1000, the élite were distinguished not only by ornaments and gold hair clips but also by a fourfold lower rate of bone lesions caused by disease.
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Hunter-gatherers practiced the most successful and longest-lasting life style in human history. In contrast, we’re still struggling with the mess into which agriculture has tumbled us, and it’s unclear whether we can solve it. Suppose that an archaeologist who had visited from outer space were trying to explain human history to his fellow spacelings. He might illustrate the results of his digs by a 24-hour clock on which one hour represents 100,000 years of real past time. If the history of the human race began at midnight, then we would now be almost at the end of our first day. We lived as hunter-gatherers for nearly the whole of that day, from midnight through dawn, noon, and sunset. Finally, at 11:54 p. m. we adopted agriculture. As our second midnight approaches, will the plight of famine-stricken peasants gradually spread to engulf us all? Or will we somehow achieve those seductive blessings that we imagine behind agriculture’s glittering façade, and that have so far eluded us?"

[robcon]

3. Bullshit article.

"Hunter-gatherers practiced the most successful and longest-lasting life style in human history."

That is, if frequent famines are ignored.

"As our second midnight approaches, will the plight of famine-stricken peasants gradually spread to engulf us all?"

Yes, peasants (living off the land, rather than selling their produce to the markets) are subject to frequent famines. Modern agriculture has reduced famines dramatically.

The definition of successful modern agriculture is that 7 billion people are supported by the current system, whereas, the frequent famines of the past would never have allowed humans to prosper so greatly, have free time, live in urban areas and live beyond a hand-to-mouth existence.

[drokhole]

4. You seem to misunderstand the article.

"That is, if frequent famines are ignored."

Please, back up your claim with facts. Here, I'll get you started:

"By definition, nothing is known of the severity or relative frequency of famines in the prehistoric era--between 30,000 BC and 3000 BC. Pre-Mughal India, pre-AD 1800 Africa, and the pre-AD 1500 New World are also virtually 'prehistory' in this sense. Yet there are several indirect routes to the past. First, the vulnerability and health status of hunter-gatherer and semisettled populations in the present or more recent past may tell us something about the frequency of famines in past times. On the basis of a study of such populations, anthropologist Mark Nathan Cohen sees no reason why prehistoric hunter-gatherers would have been undernourished, or 'suffered inordinately high rates of hunger or starvation." Paleopathological evidence from the skeletal remains suggests that life became harder with the shift from hunter-gatherer to settled farming communities."
- From the book Famine: A Short History by Cormac Ó Gráda
http://www.amazon.com/Famine-Short-History-Cormac-Gr%C3%A1da/dp/0691122377


But, wait, there's more:

"Among the most prevalent misconceptions are the following:
...
2. Hunter-gatherers are frequently on the brink of starvation and are generally malnourished. In contrast to this view, recent studies have shown that most hunter-gatherers experience infrequent famines and are generally better nourished than neighboring or comparable agriculturalists due in part to the wider variety of foods that hunter-gatherers usually obtain and the lack of reliance on the narrow range of starch-rich plants that tend to typify agricultural and horticultural societies."

http://www.enotes.com/food-encyclopedia/hunting-gathering


"Modern agriculture has reduced famines dramatically."

Really?! Here's a list of famines during the age of agriculture:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines

Over-farming, wealth inequality, selective distribution, and the reliance on crop harvest seems to have led to much more famine than in hunter-gatherer culture. Couple that with over-population, a great "success" in your book, and the problem intensifies. Moving on:

"The definition of successful modern agriculture is that 7 billion people are supported by the current system, whereas, the frequent famines of the past would never have allowed humans to prosper so greatly, have free time, live in urban areas and live beyond a hand-to-mouth existence."

First off, that's not the definition of successful modern agriculture, that's your definition. And if you think unfettered population growth to unsustainable proportions, over-farming of lands, rampant food-borne illnesses (see the OP), irreversible pollution of water-ways, and diminished air-quality is the definition of success, then all the power to you. And, again, you're applying your definition of "prosperity." Consider this, from the e-notes article:

"Hunting and gathering, or more generally stated as foraging, can be defined as a mode of subsistence in which all food is obtained from wild resources without any reliance on domesticated plants or animals. This has been the dominant means of subsistence for 99.5 percent of the 2.5 million years of human existence. It was only in the last ten thousand years or so that people began to domesticate and produce food in some areas..."

I don't know about you, but I'd certainly define the human species surviving 2,487,500 years as hunter-gatherers (99.5% of the 2.5 million years of human existence) as prosperous. Especially considering that we've pushed this planet to the point of uninhabitability in the last 100 years alone. Also, from that same article:

"Among the most prevalent misconceptions are the following:

1. People relying on wild foods had to work constantly in order to obtain enough to eat, and thus had no time to develop the arts of civilized life. In reality, quantification of time use among contemporary hunter-gatherers living in comparatively harsh environments has demonstrated that even these foragers spend only two to five hours a day in obtaining food, leaving far more time for leisure than "civilized" people have..."

You might want to revisit your "hand-to-mouth existence" claim. Finally, you seem to conveniently gloss over the severe social implications introduced by agriculture that original article pointed out:

"Besides malnutrition, starvation, and epidemic diseases, farming helped bring another curse upon humanity: deep class divisions. Hunter-gatherers have little or no stored food, and no concentrated food sources, like an orchard or a herd of cows: they live off the wild plants and animals they obtain each day. Therefore, there can be no kings, no class of social parasites who grow fat on food seized from others."

[robcon]

5. We are well rid of the nasty, brutish and short lives that early humans had.

Read the PulitzerPrize-winning "Guns, Germs and Steel" to see the real prehistory before agriculture, and the positive transformation of human lives after agriculture was invented (mostly independent from each other) in China, the Fertile Crescent (Iraq), Mexico and Peru.

Compare that to, for example, the Aborigines in Tasmania, who had never invented agriculture (domestication of plants and/or animals) and whose 18th century lives were the proverbial "nasty, brutish and short."

[drokhole]

7. I see what you did there.

Fail to address a single point/foot-noted article I presented, make another unsubstantiated generalization, and pass opinion off as fact - bonus points for citing "Guns, Germs and Steel" (read the book and watched the Nat Geo special with author Jared Diamond). You'll remember that the aim of that book was to understand the disparity of "technological advancements" between cultures, why some went on to conquer others, and why some to this day remained somewhat "primitive" (attributing most to accidents of geography, and the insatiable need by "civilized" cultures for more land along with the spread of disease due to farming practices/dietary habits from said cultures). He used the term "primitive" in quotations when describing indigenous cultures (like the New Guineans), understanding that it was a gross misconception and they were at least as smart as the average "civilized" Europeans. You'll also remember the ostensible impetus for writing the book was this question posed to him by a New Guinean named Yali:

"Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?"

A seemingly simple question on its face, but it was a question that had resonated deep with Diamond - and it eventually led him to realize that possessing more "cargo" doesn't necessarily mean you're any more "advanced." Nowhere does he claim a "positive transformation of human lives after agriculture." It was a transformation, that's it.

You also fail to realize the "nasty" and "brutish" living conditions that are still prevalent in this day and age - here, but most notably abroad. And, if you would have read the articles I linked, you would have discovered that this is a spurious claim when it comes to the pure hunter-gatherer cultures of the Paleolithic Era. Specifically:

"Paleopathological evidence from the skeletal remains suggests that life became harder with the shift from hunter-gatherer to settled farming communities."

The claim of "short" lifespans is also shaky at best, as more and more evidence points out that those who made it past the infant/adolescent stage enjoyed longer lives:

http://paleodiet.com/life-expectancy.htm

Whatever, I wasted far too much time on my previous post, and I'm not wasting anymore on this one. Believe what you want to believe.

[robcon]

8. "Believe what you want to believe." The irony is thick.

You've somehow convinced yourself that humans would be better without cities, computers or cars.

[drokhole]

9. And you've somehow convinced yourself that those are required for human existence.

Given your rapid fire response, I see you haven't read or understood anything presented. You're a waste of time.

[felix_numinous]

6. K&R