Pub economics, cheap food- and no antibiotics ?

Most people are aware how truly dreadful a world without antibiotics is going to be. Because if you go into hospital, you’ll die. No routing hip and hernia operations. Live with it, pal. No cancer operations. Live with it pal, as long as you can. As for childbirth-feminist historians will tell you what puerperal fever was. And what will be the effect of leprosy on the fashion- conscious, now that it is making an antibiotic resistant comeback?

One of the principal causes of burgeoning antibiotic resistance is their over-use in agriculture. In countries like the USA, for example, antibiotics are poured into farm animals of all kinds in intensive factory farms. It protects from infection, increases growth and allows a cruel density of stock raising currently unknown in the UK. And of course, it allows for cheap food. But what happens when the antibiotic resistance is so high, that these levels of farming cannot continue? And what’s the point of cheap food anyway, if you have cancer, and they can’t operate because of the risk of infection?

That excellent scientist and campaigner Professor Colin Garner is concerned that the current agriculture bill may open up the UK to this joint danger. In the link below he discusses the dangers of the bill from an antibiotic point of view. There are some excellent links.

Our view at LSS: The slogan “a trade deal with the USA means cheap food” is so over-simplistic that it’s just pub economics. Of course we want cheap food. But unless the views of thoughtful people like Professor Garner are heeded, the price of cheap food could be very high indeed.

part link

://www.antibioticresearch.org.uk/will-antibiotic-standards-in-farming-be-negatively-impacted-by-the-agriculture-bill/

whole link (hope this comes out!)

https://www.antibioticresearch.org.uk/will-antibiotic-standards-in-farming-be-negatively-impacted-by-the-agriculture-bill/

some background on antibiotics in farming

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6017557/

#usuktradedeal #antibioticresistance #antibioticresearchuk