Action for Animals Austin

An Associated Press article with this headline appeared in The Statesman last week (read the article).  It appears to be catching fire.  I typed the headline verbatim into Google and it returned an astonishing 539,000 results -- everyone from major outlets (ABC, CBS, et al) to tiny blogs is carrying the story.  Of course, little in this article is news to our readers (we have known about the devastating consequences of antibiotics in agriculture for a long time).  However, it is encouraging to see Congress taking baby steps towards a solution, just as it is encouraging to see this issue covered by outlets with such a large audience.

The issue is really simple: factory farming leads to sick animals, so producers started feeding massive amounts of antibiotics to all animals (even the healthy ones, and in increasing doses each year).  This has lead animals to develop germs that are resistant to antibiotics.  Long story short, we face a future where antibiotics will offer no protection from disease at all to our children and grandchildren.

Some bills have been introduced to stop this practice, but all attempts thus far have been killed by those who profit from it -- agribusiness and the pharmaceutical industry.  The truly galling part about the whole thing is that the opposition does not deny the problem.  They defend the practice of feeding animals antibiotics simply on the basis that it allows them to produce cheap meat.

Take Action

Add your voice to the discussion today!  The people who matter need to know how you feel about this.

• Add comments to the article in The Statesman.
• Write a letter to the editor.
• Contact your representative in Congress.
• Contact your Senator.

• Factory Farms
• antibiotics
• Politics