Antibiotics & Growth Hormones
By: Keaton,S
Pros & Cons
Pros:
- Animals receiving antibiotics in their feed gain 4-5% more body weight than animals who do not.
- Antibiotics are used for treating and preventing animal diseases.
- Livestock treated with antibiotics usually tend to live longer than those who don't.
- Widespread antibiotic use has led to stronger and deadlier pathogens (or diseases if you don't know what a pathogen is)
Misconceptions
Myths
- Organic farmers don't use antibiotics. When the fact is that when animals get sick, farmers both conventional and organic farmers have an obligation to use antibiotics to treat them.
- The use of antibiotics in livestock is making food less safe. This isn't true because there is always the risk of becoming sick when eating animal products and antibiotics lower this chance because they treat the infected animals before they make it into our food supplies
Antibiotic abuse in animals?
The only thing I could really find about how this could be abused in animals is if they use to much antibiotics which could cause the animal to become sick and would endanger the other animals around it.
What if antibiotic use in animals stopped?
if antibiotic use in animals stopped than there would be a lot of sick animals and that would likely transfer into the food we eat on a daily basis and make humans very very sick. Antibiotics are around to help the animals repel sickness. If they can't do that than they would become very sick and so would a lot of people.