Dangers of Farm Antibiotic Use

Farm animals nationwide are pumped full of non-therapeutic antibiotics in order to reduce disease in the crowded and unsanitary conditions of factory farms, and consequences are starting to surface within the US health-care system. A new study from researchers at Tufts University recently published in Critical Microbiology Reviews shows evidence that antibiotics from farm animals have entered food, water, and air supplies and led to increased incidences of drug-resistant infections in human populations. A separate study from earlier this year found that 77 percent of turkey samples from US grocery stores tested positive for the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus, (known colloquially as Staph), and roughly 96 percent of the affected samples were resistant to at least one antimicrobial medicine.