Meat and antibiotic resistant bacteria

The US big food producers feed antibiotics to all their animals raised for food, leading them to become the breeding ground for super-bacteria resistant to a large range of antibiotics, and they cause over 3.6 million cases of food borne illness / year.  According to the NY Times,

More than half of samples of ground turkey, pork chops and ground beef collected from supermarkets for testing by the federal government contained a bacteria resistant to antibiotics, according to a new report highlighting the findings.

 Many animals grown for meat are fed diets containing antibiotics to promote growth and reduce costs, as well as to prevent and control illness. Public health officials in the United States and in Europe, however, are warning that the consumption of meat containing antibiotics contributes to resistance in humans. A growing public awareness of the problem has led to increased sales of antibiotic-free meat.

The big Agribusiness and pharmaceutical industry groups say the results don't establish conclusive proof, so they'll pursue business as usual. They also claim the study was probably flawed, which leads me to ask if the burden of proof is on the FDA and consumer groups (representing me) or Big Agribusiness (representing big money)?  As I've noted before, the Big Agribusiness folks are lobbying for laws that will cause whistle-blowers to be prosecuted as criminals, they like making their own rules.

According to the Environmental Working group,

Pharmaceutical makers have powerful financial incentives to encourage abuse of antibiotics in livestock operations. In 2011, they sold nearly 30 million pounds of antibiotics for use on domestic food-producing animals, up 22 percent over 2005 sales by weight, according to reports complied by the FDA and the Animal Health Institute, an industry group.

 The results of the food sampling from the supermarkets is alarming, more than half the stuff in the meat and poultry section is laced with antibiotics and super bugs.  If you're going shopping for meat, consider buying it from the organic section, and always assume all meat and poultry is possibly contaminated, so use safe food handling techniques..