Factory Farm Antibiotics

Q:   How did farmers get addicted to feeding antibiotics to their farm animals?

A:   Money

In a recent New York Times article, The Fat Drug, we get a history lesson on how Lederle Laboratories started feeding its antibiotic Aureomycin to chickens to test it effects in 1948.  The chickens who got their regular feed plus the antibiotic grew faster, and gained twice the weight of the control group.

Faster and greater weight gain is equivalent to money.  Further testing on pigs, cows, and sheep proved it was universal.  Soon, they learned that they could keep the expensive drug for humans willing to pay the big price, but the waste products produced during the manufacturing of the antibiotics were equally potent for the animal feed supplement market.  The drug manufacturing wastes that previously had to be disposed at additional cost could now be sold to farmers as a feed additive; thereby giving the pharmaceutical companies a double dip of profits.

It was a marriage made in heaven.  Farmers couldn't get enough of it.

Unfortunately, few thought about the negative consequences or side effects; neither for the animals, nor those humans who would eventually eat those animals as food.

We know that there are about 1,100 different species of bacteria in the human gut around the world.  Most of those species are localized to certain geographical regions, groups, or families.  Each individual has a sub-set of around 150 species in their gut.  Those species form a community of around 100 Trillion bacteria in the typical human gut; called a microbiome.  Most of these bacteria need very specific growing conditions, and are unable to live a normal life outside the human gut, nor away from all the other microbes in the gut.

E.coli is one of the exceptions to this rule, and is quite happy living anywhere as long as you feed it.  That is why it becomes a problem when our food or hands become contaminated with E.coli.  We tend to be infected by huge colonies of E.coli that overwhelm the microbiome in our gut, giving us food poisoning.

Over time, as the experiment continued, tragic failures with many victims taught us some of the consequences for the farmer's greedy actions.  The government soon passed regulations about drug withdrawal times, so that minimal or no antibiotic residue could be found in the meat.  However, the meat that was grown under this antibiotic-induced altered state still remains on the animal.  How has the meat been changed by these life-long dosing of antibiotics?

Changing the gut changes everything.  For example, there is a recognized human medical treatment called Fecal Bacteriotherapy, or "stool transplant".  This is where stool (ie. feces) is transferred from one person to another so as to inoculate their bowl with different microbes, so as to help cure the recipient of some disease (eg. treating C. difficile  infections with over 90% success, when all available antibiotics have failed).

It has been found that if you do a stool transplant from a fat person to a skinny person, the skinny person will start to rapidly gain weight.  Similarly, if you do a stool transplant from a skinny person to a fat person, the fat person will rapidly begin to lose weight.  The gut, and the type and strength of microbes present there effect everything else in our bodies.

When farmers are messing with the microbes in the gut of farm animals, it's like the Sorcerer's Apprentice; they have no clue about what they are messing with.  Dr. Blaser and his colleagues have been studying these issues for decades, which will be summarized in their book “Missing Microbes” due out in April 2014.

Remember, there are about 100 Trillion bacteria cells in our gut, but our human body is estimated to have just 37.2 Trillion cells, so "we" (the human cells) are only 27.1% of "WE" (gut bacteria + human cells)   ie. 37.2/(37.2+100)*100%= 27.1%
 
The normal microbiome of a farm animal is totally disturbed when you feed it antibiotics.  That upset has been found to continue for weeks, months or years after the antibiotic doses have been stopped.  The entire metabolism of the animal is disrupted when antibiotics are fed.  It truly becomes "mystery meat", possibly quite different from what we have evolved and grown accustomed to eating for the last 300,000 years of human existence.

Some of those metabolic changes can be tested for today, but our knowledge is very limited.  A mere 60 years of experience compared to 300,000 years of human evolution is less than a blink of an eye.  We are truly conducting a live experiment with ourselves as the human guinea pig.

Unfortunately, the antibiotics allow faster weight gain, and also allow the raising of the animals in congested, un-natural housing on un-natural feed so as to maximize factory farm profits.  Without these necessary ingredients, factory farms would never exist.

Perhaps we will soon learn our lesson about settling for the cheapest, the lowest common denominator, and the propaganda of Big Food advertising.

Bring it to the Poor

Yesterday's Blog posting showed the health consequences of unaffordable food prices created by the #ChickenMafia and #EggMafia of Canada inflating food prices by up to 300% .

In the last 24 hours, I have been privately attacked with malice and spewing venom for yesterday's Blog posting; far more so than anything else I have posted here in the last 8 months.

I wonder why?  Is it that yesterday's posting hit a nerve for these #ChickenMafia and #EggMafia members and their supporters?

Perhaps so.

They accuse me of smearing their good reputation with pseudo-science, rumor, wild accusations, and make-believe. I have been told to drop this Blog and get a real life.  They feel that I am so far into outer space that I have no credibility whatsover, and therefore get rejected as a quack and nut job, which then ends up painting the #ChickenMafia and #EggMafia as the more reasonable and moderate parties around whom all Canadians should rally and defend.  My critics say that I am a fool, and therefore a tool for the #ChickenMafia , pushing people to join forces and defend those whom I attack in an unreasonable manner.

Very interesting.  Thanks for your feedback.

Well, here are some more facts from the government and university academics who have researched the subject far more than I.  I focus for the moment with Metabolic Disease, but there are many similar indicators; all of which point to the same culprit:  excess carbohydrates.  Perhaps you will believe them. 

Metabolic Disease for men in Southern Canada.  I guess they thought
Yukon, NWT, and Nunavut aren't important enough to study.  Too bad.

The graph above is 1986 - 1992 data analyzed by Queen's University for men showing as much as 22.4% of them have Metabolic Syndrome.  Note that ON, SK, NB, NS, and NL are the worst off.  Men are worse off than females, so I focus our attention there, but you can click on the link above and see the whole report.

As income increases, prevalence rate of
Metabolic Disease consistently decreases

For those who are better educated, they
consistently have lower rates of Metabolic Disease

Still not convinced this is a real problem that needs a real solution?  They also show that it seems to be consistently correlated with income level, as shown in this graph.

The higher the education you achieved, the lower the risk of Metabolic Disease.

Still not convinced?

Here is data showing that Metabolic Disease is related to education level.  Note the similar relative heights for the three bars, the same shape for all regions of Canada.  This is a Canada-wide issue.  I assume it would be the same or worse for Yukon, NWT, and Nunavut.

I have no proof, but I'll suggest that poor education makes it hard to find a good paying job.  Without a good paying job, it's hard to afford the gouging monopolistic prices charged by the #ChickenMafia and #EggMafia, so you are forced to dumb-down your food purchases to what you can afford, which usually means an excess of carbohydrates.

There is solid scientific proof that too many carbohydrates tends to cause you to have low energy as your body thinks it's nutritionally starving and therefore needs to conserve energy in spite of too many calories from too many carbs.  Poor nutrition in the past causes you to eat more carbs (ie. you can never get enough of what you don't really need), compounding the problem.  The low energy you feel causes a more sedentary lifestyle, further compounding the problem.  Over eating of carbs and less exercise primes you for Metabolic Disease.  See Dr. Lustig, Professor of Clinical Pediatrics, University of California; and Director of Weight Assessment for Teen and Child Health (WATCH) Program, and his series of UCTV videos on The Skinny on Obesity

Still not convinced?  Here is  is some more info from Public Health Canada for 2007 to 2009.

Canadians and their scores on the
5 precursor diagnoses that make up Metabolic Disease for 2007-2009

This data is 4 years old.  Guess what, it's probably much worse today, and gaining speed like a runaway train.  Canadians know what happens with runaway trains, don't we?  This will not end well.

Somebody needs to do something about the #ChickenMafia and the #EggMafia, and soon.  I'm doing my part, for I have brought this issue to your attention.  Now it's your turn to do something.

What will you do today to help?

I hope this is adequate for you to agree that these are not wild rantings and baseless accusations I have posted in this Blog.

If you have alternative facts by credible, unbiased sources that you wish to use to counter Small Flocker's position, then type it up, send it to me, and I will post it here unedited, then we can have some balanced discussions of both viewpoints.

If instead, you just want to be angry, or stubborn, or don't want to listen to facts, then I think that goes to prove one of my other points I have made against the arrogance and hubris of the #ChickenMafia , #EggMafia , and their supporters.