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Article: Antibiotic use in animals leaves people vulnerable to "superbugs".
- Article from:
- Environmental Nutrition
- Article date:
- August 1, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Belvoir Media Group, LLC. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Earlier this year, Perdue, Tyson and Foster Farms, three major poultry producers, revealed that they had begun to greatly reduce the use of antibiotics in their chickens. The revelations made front page headlines in The New York Times. Why so newsworthy? Because of the emerging health crisis caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Overuse of antibiotics has resulted in so-called superbugs, strains of microbes that have developed immunity to the antibiotics in our pharmaceutical arsenal. As a result, if you become sick from eating food contaminated or cross-contaminated with antibiotic-resistant Salmonella, E. coli or Campylobacter jejuni, for example, a round of ...