Industrial farms use antibiotics in their food animals on a very large scale and this is a worrying trend. Even doctors are worried because the portions being used by these industrial farms exceed what doctors usually use to treat people.
As the saying goes ‘too much of something is dangerous,’ the same is true for antibiotics. Their continued overuse poses certain risks to humans and their health in general. One of the risks is that drug resistant strains of microbes may be passed to humans when they consume the products of the animals like meat. Imagine a world where even the simplest of diseases cannot be cured because we humans already have drug resistant microbes in our bodies. This would be a total disaster and that is why urgent action needs to be taken against these industrial firms that are misusing the antibiotics. The other risk is that diseases could be spread if the animal bacteria pass their drug resistant genes to the human bacterial species.
To make matters worse, some drugs are not even being used for their intended purposes! It has been revealed that industrial farms are using these drugs to make the animals grow faster. Surely, something needs to be done to stop such risky practices. Even though the supporters of antibiotics use in food animals claim that there is no proof of cross infection or gene transfer; but who wants to risk human life by listening to them?
In conclusion, stringent measures should be put in place to curb the overuse of antibiotics in food animals. It is better to act now than wait for disasters to happen because when they do happen, the damage may be irreparable.
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