Swine flu follow-up: no more antibiotics down on the farm

According to the NY Times (and CNN as well, but I couldn't find the article this morning), the government may be wising up a bit to the CAFO scheme. Representative Louise M. Slaughter introduced a measure that proposes the following:

1. Ban the use of seven antibiotics, used to treat humans, from use on animals;
2. Restrict the use of other antibiotics to mostly therapeutic uses (with some preventative use)

The medical community is all for it, obviously; this would safeguard the effectiveness of antibiotics. However, the folks who mass-produce meat are not gonna stand for it, and the measure is not expected to pass. It's thought that the measure will be added onto the health care reform bill.

Also, we have someone up top lambasting such misuse of antibiotics: the principal deputy commissioner of food and drugs, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, basically told the House Rules Committee that the casual feeding of antibiotics to livestock should be stopped, and antibiotic use should require a vet's supervision.

It might strike you as odd that anyone would be allowed to use antibiotics for anything without first consulting someone of a medical profession, but there you have it. That's how they do business, these CAFO people.

Meat is not going to become any less healthy. If anything, the price might rise a bit to cover the extra costs of raising animals in such a despicably unhealthy fashion. (By which I mean, to put it bluntly, that it's likely that more animals will die. Which might be a mercy, when you look at how they have to live.)

This is the part where I tell you, again, that limiting your meat consumption will help. Meat production has become so bloated and unsustainable because people demand meat several times a week, or daily, or multiple times a day. You don't have to cut it out, just cut back. If demand lowers, fewer animals will be raised this way. Or, you can eat smaller. Limit the amounts you eat, or limit yourself to poultry (takes considerably less energy to produce). Better yet, buy from your local farmer's market.

The bottom line, for me, is that this is an exceedingly unsustainable process that hurts us where we live. (If you don't believe me, go try to live next to a CAFO.) Old habits die hard, and I'm far from 0% (I'm at ~1 meat serving a week), but if I can keep a couple more of my dollars from factory farms, I'm doing something.