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As we're all aware by now (hopefully), the industrialized farm industry pumps antibiotics into livestock unnecessarily in order to keep them as healthy as possible as they live and grow in the most unhealthy of environments. Antibiotic feed additives are used to promote slightly faster growth and to compensate for crowded, stressful, and often unsanitary animal-husbandry conditions. In fact, it has been estimated that 70 percent of antibiotics and related drugs used in the United States are given as feed additives to chicken, hogs, and beef cattle, all without a prescription!

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists:

Mounting scientific evidence shows that the routine feeding of antibiotics to farm animals that are not sick promotes development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that can be transferred to people, making it harder to treat bacterial infections in humans.

With the new Democratic Congress, finally there is legislation winding its way through the law-making process to address this issue called: The Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act of 2007 (S. 549/H.R. 962).

You can help this legislation pass by contacting your representatives and telling them you support the House version (HR 962) and the Senate version (S 549).

The American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the American Public Health Association, National Association of County and City Health Officials, and the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture are among the more than 350 health, consumer, environmental, sustainable agriculture, and other organizations that have called for an end to the routine use of medically important antibiotics as feed additives. The National Academy of Sciences estimates that a ban on nontherapeutic antibiotic use would raise meat prices by less than five to ten dollars per person annually, and has called for "substantial efforts" to reduce agricultural overuse of antibiotics.

More about this legislation can be found at the Union for Concerned Scientist's website...a fantastic organization t o support, by the way!

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