M6.6 Blog: Use of Antibiotics

In reading each four articles, the common theme was antibiotics and antibacterials. Both combating diseases whether it be in animals and humans. The first article Antibiotic resistance 101 both taught me and expanded more on what I knew in regards to feeding antibiotics to animals. One piece of information that was new to me was the discovery of growth when providing a small dose of hormones everyday. When providing small doses animals grow at a rapid rate; gets the consumer thinking what kind of antibiotics are being given to the animals. What also expanded my knowledge was exactly why antibiotics are given to the animals. In a way it makes sense that we want to target the host of potential spread of viruses, yet over time it has been proven that more harm that good has come out of this method. By having factories/farms have control of using antibiotics they are putting our foods and our health's in danger and the FDA needs to continue monitoring and find alternative methods to give us good meats and reducing infectious diseases. One question that came up for me is how can farm workers be okay working and see animals in these conditions and also be okay knowing they are the first contact of any disease that were to arise. I was quite shocked at how these farmers tend to have the same microbes found in the intestines as the animals. Does that not cause any concern for them?...I found the antimicrobial article on wipes interesting. How promotion is spread on the helpfulness of having antibacterial soap and wipes yet research is showing they do nothing to combat diseases. I believe they are useful in hospital and clinics as that were first contact of  transmission can occur between those who are sick and those who are not, but if they are not doing their job for everyday people then there is no point on having them and sticking to good old soap and water. Overall the impression I received from these articles was antibiotics are being misused and other alternatives need to be found in order to reduce the number of people becoming ill from exposure of infectious diseases.

Comments

  1. UnknownSeptember 30, 2018 at 5:25 PM

    I was also surprised by a lot and learned a lot from these articles. I think the farmers are probably not okay with what they're seeing, but a lot of them are employees and have no choice, or else they would be put out of business if they reverted to organic practices. I think money is a huge motivator and corrupter.

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