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Antibiotic resistance...do we stop treating?
It has become fashionable for medical/public health officials to use the issue of the overuse of antibiotics causing antibiotic resistant bacteria as a factor to keep treatment of Lyme disease at an unsafe insufficient level.
Those same medical/public health officials' concerns become muted and virtually non-existent when it comes to the mega food producers of the world contaminating our food supply with antibiotics.
By
Health Canadas'
own statement it is food producers using antibiotics / antimicrobials in farmed food products who are a cause of antibiotic resistance.
On the same Health Canada webpage when discussing safe use of antibiotics the only issue addressed is improper use in humans yet when comparing the volume of antibiotics used in our farmed food production to human medicinal consumption one realizes human use is minuscule in comparison. Antibiotics are a commodity put in feed of animals by the
ton
, and not limited by prescription as they are in humans who are then given them by the
individual dose
.
Our food industry producers are not mentioned other than that they should be "encouraged" to give antibiotics to animals only when the animals are sick. They do not...they give antibiotics to animals as growth enhancers and prophylactic disease inhibitors.
The European Union, effective Jan. 1st, 2006 has
banned all antibiotics
in animals used in the food chain.
Where is Canada on this? ... curbing treatment for humans and the targeting doctors who treat seriously sick patients.
There is considerable research globally linking most antibiotic resistant bacteria one way or another back to the use of antibiotics in our food production, hospital micro-environments, or natural evolution of micro-organisms.
Our farmers feed antibiotics / antimicrobials to cattle, pigs, chickens, etc. at alarming rates.
Government and public health officials appear to say it is okay to continue to flood our food chain with antibiotics, which is by far the most significant problem with antibiotic resistance, while we keep humans who contract treatable disease sick because we don't want to abuse antibiotics? ...something is very wrong with this logic.
Read this
about pig farmers and the concerns raised in the last paragraph by the doctor.
Here at this link is how one aspect of the animal industry explains it...
Canadian Animal Health Institute
(an institute run by those companies who make profit from selling drugs, etc. to the global mega food producers)
According to the Canadian Animal Health Insitute and Health Canada it is okay to give our food animals (cattle, chickens, fish etc) antibiotics constantly while they are alive so long as levels upon death are acceptable enough for us to eat. They call these left-over traces of antibiotics in our killed meats and fish...'residuals'.
The Canadian Animal Health Institute have diverted the issue of antibiotic 'resistance' to a discussion of antibiotic 'residuals'. (one wonders how this is an animal 'health' institute) These two topics, although related, are two very different issues.
The larger issue of antibiotic resistance has not been addressed. The micro-organisms / bacteria our cattle, chickens, fish, etc. come in contact with daily while they are being fed antibiotics are the bigger issue. Many micro-organsims are becoming antibiotic resistant thanks to feeding on our food animals who are fed with antibiotics. Think of how many ticks, fleas, mites, mosquitoes etc. feed on the back of one cow daily. Each time these bugs feed they are getting a small dose of antibiotic that is not at levels enough to kill micro-organisms/bacteria in their guts. These micro-organisms, through rapid regeneration, evolve levels of resistance to the antibiotics. This evolution crosses over into levels of resistance to human grade and type of antibiotic.
The real culprit in antibiotic resistance is the overuse of antibiotics in our global farming industry and until that is dealt with any attempt to keep humans sick for fear of creating super bugs is simply a tool used to again create fear in the public, and medical community, against using the necessary antibiotics over a long enough time to heal us. Treating victims would cost the global medical insurance industry billions of dollars...so keeping the fear alive is standard fare for the profit driven market.
On any given day we have thousands of people arriving at our airports from countries around the world where antibiotics are available without prescription at local vendors. They will undoubtedly carry antibiotic resistant bacteria to our shores as well.
We
spend a lot of money
in Canada researching the issue of antibiotic resistance yet we have not banned the biggest culprit, the mega food production business, from dumping antibiotics all over North America. These residuals are now in our food, our soil, our water etc.. see this recent
report
.
For a thorough read on this issue with abundant scientific references do a search
here
and
here
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