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The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requested that livestock producers cut back on low-dose antibiotics routinely added to the feed of chickens, pigs, and beef cattle. These antibiotics promote faster growth, but this dangerous practice also promotes the development of antibiotic-resistant superbugs that infect about 1.4 million people each year and kill at least 63,000 in North America.
The FDA's new stand is a start, but is it tough enough? I think an outright ban (the kind the European Union's had in place since the 1990s) is a better way to at least partially close the door on antibiotic-resistant bacteria and start eating clean. True, feeding animals antibiotics isn't the only reason for the rise of superbugs (overuse of antibiotics in humans, such as using antibiotics to treat a sinus infection caused by a virus, is part of the problem), but antibiotics fed to livestock are significant troublemakers.
The FDA's new stand is a start, but is it tough enough? I think an outright ban (the kind the European Union's had in place since the 1990s) is a better way to at least partially close the door on antibiotic-resistant bacteria and start eating clean. True, feeding animals antibiotics isn't the only reason for the rise of superbugs (overuse of antibiotics in humans, such as using antibiotics to treat a sinus infection caused by a virus, is part of the problem), but antibiotics fed to livestock are significant troublemakers.
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