The non-selective use of antibiotics has long been a major issue in agribusiness. If you’ll read the text of this bill, you’ll see that a great deal of the antibiotics used in raising animals for food is simply to promote growth or to permit the animals to tolerate otherwise intolerable conditions, such as extreme over-crowding.
The only function of such overcrowding is to increase profit at the expense of the humane treatment of the animals. Everybody who eats that meat ends up eating the antibiotics that remain in the meat.
The folks of PETA are not what I would normally call ‘well-balanced’. But they have this point dead to rights: overcrowding is not good for animals and it is not good for people, either.
Here’s the full text of the bill:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-1549
Sometimes allegations such as I have made above are easy to wave away as just the ranting of a fanatic few, but you’ll find them noted in this bill as facts supported by rigorous scientific research; not allegations or ranting.
So, in the interests of your own health, that of your children and theirs, I hope that you will take a few minutes to read and consider the text of this bill.
Perhaps that will lead you to push for labeling that separates organically produced foodstuffs from the rest. If you do not have this information, you can not make informed choices about your family’s diet. The use of antibiotics in livestock is strictly prohibited by organic standards. This does not imply that an animal can not receive antibiotics to deal with an injury or illness; it simply means that it cannot be sold as “organic” thereafter.
Note, too, that these antibiotics find their way into our water supplies (the stuff coming out of your tap … or in the bottles from the supermarket isn’t as pure as it looks) and also survive food preparation … even thorough cooking.
Men of my age are familiar with what girls looked like when we were young and the average young girl of today is easily bustier than all but the most ‘talented’ of the girls of our youth. You can thank the growth hormones and antibiotics in food for much of that. It has made our daughters desirable to sexual predators long before they have the mental and emotional toughness to defend themselves.
This is no place to deal with societal pressures, etc. But I can point to the source of the ‘raw material’ for these pressures.
Parents of daughters wondering how to deal with this should take a close, hard, look at what they are putting on the table. Feed them organically; give their minds a chance to keep up with their bodies.
Defend your daughters.
If you are politically inclined, now might be a good time to write your Senator or Congress-critter an honest to goodness snail mail. Tweets, Diggs, Stumbles and Facebook mentions will also help get this bill passed. Spread the word. This is your chance.
– Bill
