Eating Sick Animals is Making Us Sick

At the McDonalds drive-thru have you ever been asked, “Would you like penicillin with your Big Mac?” No? Well, you actually didn't have to be. With the rampant factory farming in the United States, all animals raised for consumption are fed extreme and unnecessary doses of antibiotics.

Not only does factory farming contribute to millions of illnesses per year, it is also leading to an increase in the number of antimicrobial-resistant pathogens.
If we are feeling sick, we can’t go to the local pharmacy to pick up an over-the-counter antibiotic, but rather we have to go to a doctor and obtain a prescription for antibiotics and other antimicrobials. Little debate exists over this practice, as this minor inconvenience is accepted because of its medical importance and as a public-health precaution to limit the number of these drugs being taken by humans. Microbes eventually become immune to antimicrobials, and we want to make sure only truly sick benefit from the limited number of uses of any antibiotic before the microbes adapt and become immune.

However, these same precautions are not used with animals. On most factory farms, drugs are fed to animals with every meal. The living conditions promote illness, and the factory industry has compensated for animals' compromised immunity with drugs. As a result, farm animals are given antibiotics nontherapeutically—or before they get sick.

In the United States, about 3 million pounds of antibiotics are given to humans each year, but the Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that the farming industry uses approximately 25 million pounds of antibiotics before animals are even sick—or for every one dose of antibiotics taken by a sick human, eight doses are given to a "healthy" animal.

Beginning in the 1960s, scientists warned of the harms of nontherapeutic antibiotics and today the American Medical Association, the Centers for Disease Control, and the World Health Organization have connected nontherapeutic antibiotic use with increased antimicrobial immunity. Studies have shown that antimicrobial resistance follows soon after the introduction of new drugs into farms.

Despite the need for a total ban on the use of antibiotics for “healthy” animals, the farming and pharmaceutical industries has so much power given to them by us—the people that fund them on a massive scale by eating tons and tons of factory farmed animal products daily.

The environment that contributes to the food-borne illness of at least 76 million Americans and that promotes antimicrobial immunity also increases to the risk of a pandemic. Today, the farm-pandemic link is increasingly clear. The recent H1N1 swine flu outbreak originated at a hog factory farm in North Carolina, and then spread throughout the world, killing almost 4,000 in the United States.

Breeding sickness-prone birds in overcrowded and disgusting farms encourages the development of pathogens. However, this practice promotes efficient and cheap meat, forcing Americans to chose: cheap meat or health?

The choice may seem obvious, but this rationalization is pushed in the back of our minds. Maybe we block out the knowledge that unhealthy and unnatural conditions plague the farms which breed our meals. Maybe we know more than we admit when it comes to meat and its production. Soon however, this information will reach us—whether through the media or through illnesses, and we will learn that these sick animals are making us sick.