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Meat, AKA Antibiotic Delivery System

Here’s dyspepsia-inducing news: 80 percent of antibiotics consumed in the US are used by the meat industry. More: • Of the Salmonella on ground turkey, about 78% were resistant to at least one antibiotic and half of the bacteria were resistant to three or more. These figures are up compared to 2010. • Nearly three-quarters […]

Here’s dyspepsia-inducing news: 80 percent of antibiotics consumed in the US are used by the meat industry. More:

• Of the Salmonella on ground turkey, about 78% were resistant to at least one antibiotic and half of the bacteria were resistant to three or more. These figures are up compared to 2010.

• Nearly three-quarters of the Salmonella found on retail chicken breast were resistant to at least one antibiotic. About 12% of retail chicken breast and ground turkey samples were contaminated with Salmonella.

• Resistance to tetracycline [an antibiotic] is up among Campylobacter on retail chicken. About 95% of chicken products were contaminated with Campylobacter, and nearly half of those bacteria were resistant to tetracyclines. This reflects an increase over last year and 2002.

Gotta love factory farming. What could possibly go wrong?

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