avilamycin and us

Avilamycin and Us

We are now running out of antibiotics we can use fast. The government has just banned four antibiotics, which were used on a very wide scale in farming. This may appear to be a victory, however farmers are only going to have one effective growth promoter left – AVILAMYCIN (marketed as Maxus G200).
This is being pushed heavily by the drugs companies in light of this ban, the only problem is it is almost identical to an antibiotic being developed at the moment for human use called Ziracin (everninomycin).
These two are completely cross-resistant and as Avilamycin is the only drug left farmers can use, it is going to be used on a massive scale.

MRSA is a term we hear bandied around a lot, in fact we all contain MRSA (Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus) and it is only a problem when it becomes an infection - there are now strains of MRSA resistant bacteria and these are on the increase......

We do have cause for concern; in 1997 the government banned a growth promoter called Avoparcin. This is almost identical to a human antibiotic called Vancomycin (which incidentally is not a very nice drug to have to be treated by - it has many nasty side-effects). Very recently, vancomycin resistant strains of MRSA were discovered in Glasgow RI. We believe that this was because of the overuse of this drug in farming