The use of the powerful antibiotic streptomycin as a growth-promoting agent in turkeys also quickly promotes the growth of dangerous streptomycin-resistant coliform bacteria, according to researchers at University of California, Davis. Perhaps such a finding should be cause for alarm, considering how agribusiness pumps more than 20 million pound of antibiotics into healthy livestock each year, constituting more than 70 percent of all antibiotics used in the United States. Then again, the aforementioned study was published in 1951. Hundreds of similar studies have since been published. But no one seems to care. Yet as serious questions arise about U.S. food safety nearly monthly, and with antibiotic abuse rampant and with antibacterial-resistant ‘super bugs’ reaching epidemic proportions, maybe it’s time to rethink the practice of industrial-scale animal production. Scientists at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore and the Pew Charitable Trusts are now calling for a phase-out and eventual ban of antibacterial agents for nontherapeutic use in livestock. They have taken their cause to Washington this month with ads in the Metro subway system and elsewhere. Old MacDonald had some drugs Antibiotics down on the industrial farm serve two purposes. They make […]