Look down at your steak. This is your meat on drugs. Now, I'm not vegetarian, but this issue alone should stimulate reflection on where we buy our meat and where meat fits into our food system. These drugs end up in the meat we eat, in the environment, and help to create drug-resistant strains of bacteria that kill 10s of 1000s of people each year.
As reported by Food Safety News, the numbers are astonishing.
Congresswoman Louise Slaughter (D-NY) announced Wednesday that FDA confirmed the numbers with her office for the first time. She plans to reintroduce a bill she crafted in 2009 aimed at preserving the effectiveness of antibiotics important for human health by limiting their use in agriculture.So, what can we do now to vote for a different method for raising animals for food? Vote with our dollars! One potentially good source of meat is a local CSA farm. These are typically small-scale farms that raise animals organically and/or largely grass-fed on pasture. Often you can tour the farm and see for yourself how the animals are handled. Since these farms are small and the animals kept outside most of the time, they don't need to use the "preventative" drug therapy that the large-scale industrial feedlots must in order to keep disease to a minimum.
