Did you know that antibiotics are regularly added to livestock feed in the US?

This may change if California’s State Senate passes a bill…

…that would bar ranchers and farmers, starting in 2015, from giving feed containing antibiotics to healthy animals to promote growth and ward off disease.

The bill would also prohibit schools, starting in 2012, from serving students meat from animals that have been routinely treated with antibiotics and would require state and local government facilities to try to buy antibiotic-free meat for their kitchens.

read the news item from KCRA…

What you need to know:

Antibiotics help stave off illness, but when constantly provided to healthy animals, may result in mutated strains of bacteria that are more powerful and harmful to both animals and humans.

Just as you wouldn’t give a healthy child antibiotics on a daily basis, there should be no reason to do so with bovines. So why do growers do so?

Unfortunately for most cows, they aren’t born into an ideal farm surrounding where they graze merrily in open pasture.They lead a short and miserable life in CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) which are more like factories than farms. The animals are held in very close quarters, with little room to move and exercise. As a result, they are more prone to illness, and receive daily preventive doses of medicine.

What to do at the supermarket:

Today the only way to get antibiotic free meat and poultry is to buy organic or from a trusted local farm. It’s much more expensive, mind you, than “regular” beef, but for many people it is the only logical choice, from a health perspective as well as a moral one.

And who says we gotta eat meat every day?

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