Superbugs

I'm not much of a fan of Nicholas Kristof, but he did have a good op-ed in yesterday's Sunday Times. It was about the meat-borne bacteria that are becoming immune to antibiotics (KPC Klebsiella is resistant to all FDA-approved antibiotics). I wonder if Kristof was prompted to write this column after seeing Food, Inc himself.

Anyway, it's good to have more publicity about how dangerous eating meat can be with the way it's produced and that it requires so much in antibiotics. In the USA, 70 percent of antibiotics are used for healthy livestock. 14% for sick livestock, and 16% for humans and their pets.

My only quibble with Kristof's column is that he says vegetarians are vulnerable to antibiotic resistance nurtured in hog barns. He continues:

Microbes swap genes, so antibiotic resistance developed in pigs can jump to microbes that infect humans in hospitals, locker rooms, schools or homes.

I don't doubt that this is true, but I am very skeptical about the chances of that happening in comparison to it happening because of eating meat. These microbes can jump to carnivores too! Kristof is never one to rock the boat, and he seems to be implying here that you're no safer being a vegetarian than being a carnivore. In this whole context of bacteria, I very much doubt this.