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| Maintaining Animal Health via antimicrobials and antibiotics |
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Shocking Levels of Antibiotic Abuse on Factory Farms
A MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) bacteria strain is seen in a petri dish: Less than a century after the discovery of penicillin, one of the most powerful miracle weapons ever produced by modern medicine threatens to become ineffective.
Stadium-size warehouses shoehorn 100,000 sows into claustrophobic cages that hold them in one position for a lifetime over metal-grate floors. Below, aluminum culverts collect and channel their putrefying waste into 10-acre, open-air pits three stories deep from which miasmal vapors choke surrounding communities and tens of millions of gallons of hog feces ooze into North Carolina’s rivers.The slum conditions on factory farms are breeding grounds for disease.
