> Jonathan Reeves wrote:
>
> Mike Lorrey writes:
>
> I guess you didn't read what I said. I understand what you are saying.
> My own father has had repeat battles with a blood infection that swelled
> up his legs like elephantiasis, and they had to bring out what his doc
> calls 'the big guns' to finally whip it. What I was saying though, is
> that if there were resistant strains in the meat, then those strains got
> resistant due to an incomplete or insufficient treatment of antibiotics
> IN THE COW (NOT you). So the point is, it suggests the farmer is not
> giving the cow a sufficient dose of anti-biotics to wipe out the
> bacteria, NOT that its wrong he's giving them it at all.
>
> Sorry Mike, but you dont know what you're talking about. The more antibiotics
> you use the more likely the bacteria will develop resistance. Anti-biotic
> resistant strains of bacteria do not arise because the bacteria adapt to a low
> level of antibiotic in their environment. The strain arises because some of
> the population are already resistant to that antibiotic and it is their
> offspring which survive in that environment. Giving cows more antibiotics
> would make the situation worse, not better.
Listen to what you are saying:
'the more anti-biotics you use, the more likely the bacterial will develop
resistance'
if this were so, then use of antibiotics on humans would have long ago developed
resistant strains. ALL doctors I talk to have said that resistant strains arise
as a result of patients not completing the full regimen of anti-biotics they are
prescribed, patients who stop taking them when they 'feel better', NOT when all
the pills are gone, which is how TB has gotten so resistant, and is primarily
found in a segment of the population least likely to take the advice of a
doctor: poor minority and homeless people. Dairy farmers, at least the ones I
know, are a VERY stingy lot. "Waste not, want not" and other such aphorisms are
their creed. I can completely believe that a farmer, being typically a rather
independent minded person, would stop giving his cows anti-biotics when they
started looking better, and NOT when the Vet said to stop, thus likely creating
a similarly insufficient course of treatment that is likely to breed resistant
bacteria.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 02 2000 - 17:35:33 MDT