
Nearly 30 million pounds of antibiotics used on livestock annually in USA - ck2
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/12/news-update-farm-animals-get-80-of-antibiotics-sold-in-us
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patio11
Normalize by biomass and we're probably neglecting the poor critters.

~~~
ars
According to wikipedia there are about 96,669,000 cattle in the US, and
1,970,000,000 chickens. Compared to about 300,000,000 humans.

Food animals aren't kept alive long, but they do live at least around a year,
so lets ignore births/deaths within the year.

Lets see, a chicken is about 5lb, cattle about 1600, and humans say 150.

So about 45,000,000,000 lb of humans, and 164,520,400,000 lb of food animals.

Based on that I would expect 27% of antibiotics for humans, and 73% for
animals - and that matches pretty well with reality, especially considering
the crude estimates I used, and completely ignoring pets.

~~~
fleitz
Amazing what happens when you ignore sensationalism and do a little math. Most
'chickens', technically roosters, don't live long, only about 1 day.

<http://scienceray.com/biology/the-lifespan-of-farm-animals/>

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Confusion
Title and article design fail. They fail to convey any information anyone can
actually understand. Nobody grasps how much '30 million pounds' is, except for
'sounds like, and is obviously intended to mean, a lot'. To understand this
number, we require at least:

\- the average number of grams each piece of livestock gets

\- the average number of grams _humans_ get

Saying it's "80% of all antibiotics produced" doesn't add one iota of
understanding, because then you need to know the ratio of livestock to humans
in addition to the numbers above.

As these aren't explained in the article, the entire article is mere FUD.

~~~
ck2
Let's put it this way, how many pounds of antibiotics do you think livestock
were getting 50 years ago?

(the answer is zero)

The number of drug-resistant organisms found in these situations is starting
to become alarming and the EU has banned several livestock drugs years ago
which are still used in the USA. But of course most countries in the EU don't
use hospitals and medical treatment as a profit-center either.

~~~
Confusion
I'm not arguing that the amount of antibiotics isn't a problem. My father has
worked in the industry for over 30 years and has been telling me the same
since 1990. That doesn't make a lick of difference, because my point is that
_this article_ isn't going to convince anyone. People will read it and may be
alarmed by it, but anyone can dispel the alarm, because the people reading it
haven't received any real information. That's the weakness of using FUD in
your favor.

BTW, your argument isn't very convincing. How many pounds of antibiotics do
you think humans were getting 100 years ago? I don't doubt you think we became
healthier since then.

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ck2
Be sure to read the original article too

[http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/12/news-break-fda-
est...](http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/12/news-break-fda-estimate-us-
livestock-get-29-million-pounds-of-antibiotics-per-year/)

Oh and vegitarians can't escape this either, even in food from "organic"
farms.

Liquid manure from the livestock is used on the crops and the antibiotics gets
into other food that way.

