Resistant bacteria and antibiotic chicken feed

[asterroc]

If you have a spare moment, please sign this virtual petition started by the Union of Concerned Scientists. The purpose of the petition is to convince Pilgrim's Pride to join other poultry producers in reducing their use of antibacterial chicken feed.

Many chicken farms routinely put antibiotics into chicken feed, whether or not the chickens are sick, as a preventative measure. The problem is that using the antibiotics kills most of the target bacteria in the chicken, but some hardy ones survive. These are the ones that then reproduce, creating antibiotic resistant strains ("superbugs"). This is the same process that creates superbugs in hospitals, such as MRSA. Which I am a lucky host of, as part of my skin disease hidradenitis suppurativa (though the auto-immune component appears to be more important).

So yeah, sign the petition.

Cross-posted.

Comments

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, knowing Bo Pilgrim (a man so fundamentally crooked that, to steal from Hunter S. Thompson, he needs four people to help him screw his pants on every morning), nothing short of being threatened with eternal damnation will do a bit of good. The only real hope we have of getting Bo to stop with the antibiotics is to get Texas Governor Rick Perry out of office this November: Perry ran and won his old spot as Texas Agriculture Commissioner thanks to Bo's money, and Perry's consistently fought any effort to get Pilgrim Farms to abide by anything approaching common sense when it comes to waste treatment or medication. However, should Kinky Friedman win the election, and he stands a good chance based on his competition, the new governor himself plans to make antibiotic treatment of this sort illegal.

Goddamnit

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

It is because of things like this that I absolutely HATE politics. There is no rational reason why who is governor of Texas should affect my health here in Massachusetts. (And my Internal Devil's Advocate^TM says: "It's no more convoluted than the evidence for evolution.")

And the list of companies I am boycotting just keeps getting longer; I'm losing track. I think it'll be simpler if I really do go with the "buy local" mentality.