Analysis Of The Documentary 'Compassion In World Farming'

Hunting the Nightmare Bacteria documentary has had me paranoid. It’s scary to think foreign bacteria can enter your body and shut it down. The most informing information was the NDM-1 wasn’t a bacteria it was a resistance gene that can turn bacteria into superbugs. I do think antibiotics are being over used. I agree with M.D Arjun Srinivasan,” the more you expose a bacteria to an antibiotic, the greater the likelihood that resistance to that antibiotic is going to develop. So the more antibiotics we put into people, we put into the environment, the more opportunities we create for these bacteria to become resistant”.

However, most experts say that overall meat is safer now than it's ever been. There is still a risk, though. For example, according to a study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, almost half of our meat and poultry contain Staphylococcus aureus, a type of bacteria that can cause serious infections as well as death (Andrew E. Waters). Here's what Lance B. Price, Ph.D., senior author of the study said about the bacteria, “We know that nearly half of our food supply's meat and poultry are contaminated with S. aureus, and more than half of those are multidrug resistant.” However, he goes on to say, “What we don't know [is] how often these transfer to people. We need more studies to quantify the public health impact (Gardner).” Furthermore, Pascal James Imperato, M.D., dean of the School of Public Health at SUNY-Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, NY said, “Numerous studies of this type done in other countries...have generally come up with the same findings, that multidrug-resistant S. aureus are present in a variety of animal meats.” "But, so far, no one has been able to draw a connection between the presence of those bacteria in meats and human illness (Gardner)." So, as one can see, even though S. aureus is

In the past century there has been a substantial change in the way human beings raise and keep animals meant for food. While in the past there were great numbers of widely spaced small individual farms, now there are relatively few, but extremely large industrialized farms. And as the numbers of animals kept and slaughtered for human consumption increases, these industrialized farms, known as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations or CAFO's, are having more and more of an impact on the environment and people around them. The concentration of animals causes a major problem with the waste products they produce, as well as the gases, chemicals, and other types of byproducts. And the increased use of antibiotics in the animals is beginning to have a profound effect on the health of not only the environment but the communities that exist around these industrialized farms. CAFO's, and their secondary industries, are also a large consumer of oil, gasoline, and other fuels which can have an indirect, but devastating effect on the environment. Luckily there are some who have come to recognize the problems, and potential future problems, involved in this type of animal farming and have begun to inform the public to the dangers these farms pose. And in response to this information, the public is beginning to force changes in the way these CAFO's operate and the impact they have on the environment and

Then Tom continues education with a little education on the variety of antibiotics and how “crucial for treating serious human infections” (Philpott). Using a hotlink to a well-known credible organization like the “Food and Drug Administration” back up some of his statistics regarding over use of antibiotics in livestock operations. Tom continually notes

Do you want the animals you eat feed antibiotics and the food is not fresh or do you want food that is fresh and the animals are feed right?Ranchers and farmers have been feeding antibiotics to the animals we eat. Ever since they discovered decades ago and has been found as a health risk to humans but there is a food chain that can help America. The local sustainable food chain is the best food source to feed America.

By weight, eighty percent of antibiotics are used in agriculture to “fatten animals” and “protect them from the conditions in which they are raised” (McKenna). Animals are given micro-doses of antibiotics, that is, a small amount of antibiotics to prevent diseases from occurring. This micro-dosage amount allows for mutation that Fleming described. The routine use of antibiotics in agriculture has led to “[sixty-five] percent of chicken breasts” and “[forty-four] percent of ground beef” to house bacteria “resistant to tetracycline”. Additionally, “[eleven] percent of pork chops carried bacteria resistant to five classes of drugs” (McKenna). These bacteria then spread from animals to the humans who eat them, causing humans to get infections which cannot be treated. The issue isn’t as simple as ceasing to give antibiotics to animals. Most animals raised for consumption live in an environment ripe for infections and diseases to spread. Instead of giving the animals more room to live, the majority of farmers opt to give the animals antibiotics. For cattle, This prevents diseases and death to the immature weaned calves and cattle which saves the rancher both time and money—passing on the savings to the consumers. In a free market society higher prices tend to not go well. However, if antibiotics became useless farmers would have to “[enlarge] barns, [cut] down on crowding, and [delay] weaning”, which ultimately would increase the costs of raising livestock

“Eating Animals is Making us Sick” is written by Jonathan Safran Foer. In this article, the author makes a connection between a number of antibiotics given to animals, and the sicknesses that plague the human population. The author wants the audience to recognize that the common practice of factory farming is loosely regulated. Because of this loose regulation, farmers are allowed to immunize their animals and treat their animals to unhealthy extremes. This treatment leads to antimicrobial-resistant pathogens. The author, Jonathan Safran Foer, successfully uses pathos, ethos, and logos to argue that the treatment and the enormous amount of drugs being pumped into livestock have major effects on the audience's health.

This is due in part by the previous statement to get higher yields out every animal raised. Cattle, chickens and pigs alike are all subject to certain fattening diets, modern breeding techniques and growth hormone treatments. These forced practices have very adverse, life altering and threatening affects that lead farmers to use antibiotics in order to keep diseases at bay. The Committee on Drug Use in Food Animals states, “doses are used when pathogens are known to be present in the environment or when animals encounter a high stress situation and are more susceptible to pathogens “, (1999, p. 28). It is important to point out that the use of growth hormones and antibiotics dramatically increases body mass, drastically shortens the lifespan of animals such as cattle and is being detected in food for human consumption.

There should be more regulations about using antibiotics, vaccines, insecticides, and hormones because they stay inside the animals and can be harmful to consumers when they eat the contaminated food. Three common topics that have come up before are that the chemicals left in the meat can cause cancer, antibiotic overuse is creating antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, and what the factory farmers are feeding the animals we consume. Antibiotics, vaccines, insecticides, and hormones should be used

The health of consumers will not be endangered if we treat the animals humanely. Antibiotic resistance caused by factory

While reviewing this website, I’ve come to understand that cloning meat is and has been treacherous to us for providing harm to our farm animals by giving them high doses of different chemicals, making them live with birth defects and making statements to deceive the public by saying it’s a harmless process that enhances and multiply the breed of animals when it really does not. The scariest part to this issue is our animals suffer and so do we if we’re meat consumers. (Dan Kedmey) Then studies have proven that bacteriological meat contamination in the US, for the first time was enacted in 1906 when the Pure Food and Drug Act was signed by laws in regards of banning infected and mislabeled products from the interstate commerce. Observations about those risks were associated with bacteriological meat contamination, and about how it should be regulated, has changed significantly since then. This article focuses particularly on changes that have occurred in bacteriological meat contamination standards in the US since the early 1980s when E. coli was for the first time identified as a new foodborne pathogen associated with the consumption of undercooked meat. The idea of cloning farm animals is to produce replicas of the animals with the highest economic value, for example the fastest-growing pigs or the highest-yielding dairy cows to make a profit off of. However the process of cloning itself causes our animals suffering. Animals with the highest economic value are prone to developing severe health problems, pushed to their physical limits; they are destined to a lifetime of suffering. The Cloning equals Cruelty campaign highlighted intrinsic animal welfare issues for selective breeding in animals for food, meat and dairy. Research also shows that many cloned farm animals are born with deformed organs and live short and miserable

Corn is the number one grain used to feed animals for slaughter. Feeding cows corn instead of their natural diet lead to the unintentional creation of 157H7 E. coli, a deadly bacteria that can kill. The film reveals how food standards have dropped, with only 9,164 safety inspections from the FDA each year as compared to over 50,000 in 1972. The food industry has become consolidated to the point of a few companies having a great deal of power and influence via the government. The USDA is no longer able to shutdown plants with contaminated meat. A bill titled “Kevin’s Law” had the intent of changing that, but, after 6 years, the bill still has not been passed. Food companies have made some attempts to reduce E. coli by cleaning their meats in an ammonia solution. However, unhealthy food is being subsidized and contributing to American obesity and the rise of type 2 diabetes in adolescents.

For this discussion board assignment, I chose the article “Restaurant report card: What's in your fast food meat?”, by Michael Nedelman, CNN (2017). The purpose of Nedelman’s article is to inform consumers the importance of knowing what company uses antibiotics in their meats, and he listed fast food chains that failed and passed the regulation. In Nedelman’s article, he pointed out that historically, animals will be given antibiotics to gain weight and prevent diseases in crowds; however, as an outcome, CDC estimated that about 2 millions of Americans died from antibiotic-resistant infection after consuming meats. In the text, Nedelman stated “While regulations and consumer pressure have encouraged some chains to cut back on the use of antibiotics,

As the soil becomes more and more polluted with these toxins, it becomes unsustainable. Therefore, land that would have remained fertile for centuries through the commonsense farming of our ancestors, is being ruined by farming controlled by big corporations whose sole interest is in immediate short term profit (Goodall 38). Industrialized livestock farming with thousands of animals crammed into small factory spaces is responsible for numerous bacterial and viral infections such as E.coli., Avian bird flu, Mad cow disease, Salmonella, and many more. Therefore, conventional farmers use antibiotics to keep these animals alive. This over use of antibiotics is causing the creation of new, resistant strains of deadly diseases that kill people and animals. Disease is actually caused by the bad practices, shortcuts, and antibiotic resistance. This has the opposite effect of what was intended and also costs farmers millions of dollars every year instead of saving money. Unfortunately, conventional agriculture experts recommend these monocultural farming practices in the name of quick, mass production.

What I really liked about this documentary is that some of the points brought up are things that most people never talk about. For example, it mentioned that the most prescribed medication in the world is Lipitor, which is a diabetes medication. However, since the introduction of Lipitor to the public, the incidence of diabetes has not decreased, in fact the amount of people who suffer from diabetes has actually increased. This just shows that the way we are trying to solve the problem is not working. It seemed so strange to me that we spend so much money on the development of medications, yet the most used form of treatment doesn’t really help those who need it. Treating the symptoms is not a cure it is only a short term fix for a long term problem. Not are the people being cured, they are now going to be spending the rest of their lives dependent on medication, and we are yet to understand the long term effects of long term medication use. This also raises the question, if the medication is not helping what can? The documentary proposed that a complete change in diet was the answer. The documentary used a study that was done with people who had diabetes their whole lives and switched them to a whole foods plant based diet, and their health improved drastically. It was mind blowing