*This is related to food production but more about the meat part of it than vegetables and fruits.
Scary article came out. Half of the meat in our stores are tainted with staph bacteria. Staph bacteria is worrisome because the strains of staph bacteria they found on the meat are shown to be highly resistant to antibiotics especially the last of the line antibiotics. So if you get sick with a staph infection and the bacteria is resistant to the strongest antibiotics available you're kind of out of luck.
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/04/15/tainted-food-epidemic-staph-bacteria-meat-poultry/
A reason why half the meat in our stores are carrying traces of resistant strains of staph is because the way we raise our cows, our pigs, our chickens, etc. Whatever meat you eat. We inject them with antibiotics and hormones to ensure they make it to the end of the food production line and quickly (slaughterhouse). This is why a lot of people look into organic meat: no antibiotics, free-range and hormone free.
The good news is that staph is easy to kill. Just practice good sanitation behaviors when handling meat; wash your hands, wash down the kitchen counter, be careful not to cut yourself when handling meat, etc. And by the time you cook the meat the bacteria should be gone and you should be fine. However this raises the question of we know the more we use antibiotics the more bacteria evolves to resist those antibiotics so why do we do it? At first when farmers began to use antibiotics and hormones to raise meat was because wow the cows aren't getting as sick as much and they're growing so much quicker. The turnaround is faster and the profit is safe (less cows falling ill and more meat more quickly). Then we kept on doing it which raises bigger concerns and safety fails (food recalls, warnings such as this one about staph bacteria, etc).
This is worrisome because researchers are constantly, constantly looking to create stronger and stronger antibiotics and the bacteria is evolving faster than the researchers can create new antibiotics.
Scary article came out. Half of the meat in our stores are tainted with staph bacteria. Staph bacteria is worrisome because the strains of staph bacteria they found on the meat are shown to be highly resistant to antibiotics especially the last of the line antibiotics. So if you get sick with a staph infection and the bacteria is resistant to the strongest antibiotics available you're kind of out of luck.
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/04/15/tainted-food-epidemic-staph-bacteria-meat-poultry/
A reason why half the meat in our stores are carrying traces of resistant strains of staph is because the way we raise our cows, our pigs, our chickens, etc. Whatever meat you eat. We inject them with antibiotics and hormones to ensure they make it to the end of the food production line and quickly (slaughterhouse). This is why a lot of people look into organic meat: no antibiotics, free-range and hormone free.
The good news is that staph is easy to kill. Just practice good sanitation behaviors when handling meat; wash your hands, wash down the kitchen counter, be careful not to cut yourself when handling meat, etc. And by the time you cook the meat the bacteria should be gone and you should be fine. However this raises the question of we know the more we use antibiotics the more bacteria evolves to resist those antibiotics so why do we do it? At first when farmers began to use antibiotics and hormones to raise meat was because wow the cows aren't getting as sick as much and they're growing so much quicker. The turnaround is faster and the profit is safe (less cows falling ill and more meat more quickly). Then we kept on doing it which raises bigger concerns and safety fails (food recalls, warnings such as this one about staph bacteria, etc).
This is worrisome because researchers are constantly, constantly looking to create stronger and stronger antibiotics and the bacteria is evolving faster than the researchers can create new antibiotics.
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