Factory Farms, CAFOs, Are Breeding Ground for Superbugs

Mar 5, 2018

Factory Farms, CAFOs, Are Breeding Ground for Superbugs

Germ warfare is a grave threat to the American population.
See the Antibiotic Resistance Action Center at the
Milken Institute School for Public Heath

'The most diabolical villain could not design a better system for creating superbugs than factory farms'

Madison, Wisconsin — Designing drug-resistant superbugs is the purview of demented bad actors, like black biology out a Richard Preston or Daniel Kala bio-terrorist thriller.

The prospect of malignant perpetrators releasing superbugs on unsuspecting populations ought to alarm everyone from the most dull state representative to research scientists working at the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The problem is government-subsidized industry is creating superbugs and the worst perpetrator is the factory farm, or CAFO, concentrated animal feeding operation, aka feedlot, or in the words of micro-biologist, Lance Price, "diabolical villain(s)" working out of a "fecal wasteland."

Dr. Lance B. Price is the Director of the Antibiotic Resistance Action Center (@battlesuperbugs) and professor at the Milken Institute School of Public Health (#GWSPH).

Price is sounding the alarm on this grave and growing threat of Big Ag against everyone else.

If you live in Wisconsin, the last seven years have seen the complete abdication of public health by the Scott Walker adminstration in favor of actively promoting and aiding Big Ag against the population.

Below is an excerpt and video of Price's TEDx talk Manhattan delivered Mar 11, 2014.

From Dr. Price:

I track super-bugs. I use DNA to see where these things are coming from. On one hand my job is super-exciting and fun because I get to see how these amazing little microbes exchange genes, pick up mutations and become resistant to antibiotics and then take off around the world. ...

On the other hand my job is pretty depressing for some of the same reasons but also because I see the victims of these super-bugs. I've met the victims who've barely survived with their lives and sadly I've met parents who've lost their children to these superbugs.

And this, (superbugs), is just a cute name that we use for anti-biopic-resistant bacteria. So, these are bacteria that are resistant to our best antibiotics.

And it turns out that the CDC is saying that those parents that our losing children are not so rare. 23,000 Americans die, this is a conservative estimate, 23,000 die of super-bug infections each year. And so understanding their origins is really essential. And on some levels it's really simple, it's just a matter of evolution. So let's pretend for a minute that this is a very small group of bacteria. Bacteria usually travel in packs of billions. Every now and then when you have a big group of bacteria, one of them is going to pick up a mutation or a gene from another bacterium that makes them resistant to antibiotics.

If that's happening in an environment where you have a lot of antibiotics, then the susceptible bacteria, that is the non-resistant ones, are going to die off and the resistant ones are going to go on to multiply.

And the thing about bacteria is that they multiply very quickly. So E-coli, for instance, can double every thirty minutes, and you go a from a single cell, a single drug-resistant e-coli, to a billion, more than a billion, in 24 hours. This is simple Darwinian evolution, but Darwinian evolution is real time. So, if you're like me and you're interested in knowing where these super-bugs are coming from then you have to go to the places where we're using a lot of antibiotics. ...

Factory Farms or CAFOs

We're using 30-million pounds of antibiotics in food-animal production each year, 30-million pounds. The best estimates suggest only 20 percent of those antibiotics to used to treat sick animals.

Eighty percent are being used as production tools. They're being used to make animals grow faster. They're being used to prevent disease, or treat diseases, that are occurring just because of the way we are raising animals. The industry calls these 'production diseases' but rather than change production, we are just using antibiotics. ...

When I see these (animal) factories, when I see these operations, ... I see factories making trillions and trillions and trillions of drug-resistance bacteria.

The most diabolical villain could not design a better system for creating super-bugs than the modern CAFO. You have everything you need. ...