60 minutes tonight,another imugene endorsement, page-2

Intensively reared animals like chicken, pigs and feedlot cattle are often fed antibiotics to make them grow faster. But this can result in antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the animals, which can sometimes be a problem if they’re passed on to people.
Using antibiotics to promote growth in animals is one important and avoidable part of the problem, despite the fact that misuse of antibiotics in people is responsible for the lion’s share. CHOICE tested around 140 chickens from supermarkets in Brisbane and Sydney for one particularly problematic antibiotic-resistant bacteria, vancomycin-resistant enterococci or VRE. More than one in 10 chickens (13%) were contaminated.

If chicken isn’t handled and cooked properly, any VRE could be transferred to people. But, the bugs usually sit in your body doing no damage – if you’re healthy and stay that way, there’s no problem.

However, if you have to go to hospital for invasive surgery, for example, or if you’re already seriously ill, that’s when even more serious problems can arise.

If you get some kind of infection you’ll be given antibiotics to treat it, and they’ll kill off all the bugs except those that are resistant. And VRE, being resistant to almost all known antibiotics, can then flourish and invade your body to become life-threatening. Although the risk appears to be small, it still exists, especially for people who are already sick

This new threat is just another to add to a long list of things that can make you ill if you don’t handle meat with care. You need to make sure your food handling practices are immaculate to stop bacteria spreading around your kitchen, and make sure you cook your chook thoroughly.

While the CHOICE story is focused on the problem in chicken meat, the ACA sees the use of antibiotics as growth promoters as a problem that extends beyond the chicken industry. We maintain that antibiotics with human analogs should be banned for use as growth promoters and that an extensive review needs to be undertaken about the risks associated with non-human analogous antibiotics for such use in food-producing animals after the extent of such practices is determined across all food producing animal industries in Australia.

ACA acknowledges that the rise of antibiotic resistance is a multifaceted problem, and that the most significant problem is the misuse and overuse of antibiotics in treating people. However, the use of antibiotics as a growth promoters in livestock is an area where intervention and measurable inroads can be made on the problem