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WARNING: Experts Claim Factory Farming Could Lead To Next Pandemic

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Crowded conditions and prophylactic use of antibiotics are creating an environment ripe for viruses and bacteria to evolve and jump from animal to human populations.

BEYOND PESTICIDES: As the globe settles in for a long summer of social distancing to prevent the spread of COVID-19, experts warn that concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), more commonly referred to as “factory farms,” are setting the table for the next pandemic. Crowded conditions and prophylactic use of antibiotics, scientists say, are creating an environment ripe for viruses and bacteria to evolve and jump from animal to human populations. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations said back in 2013, “Livestock health is the weakest link in our global health chain.” Alternatively, organic principles offer an existing federal guideline for ecologically and environmentally viable conditions for agriculture…

Viruses and bacteria proliferating in the food system have worried epidemiologists for years… Pathogens can quickly rip through a barn of crowded animals, so farms give livestock low doses of antibiotics to preemptively suppress bacteria (the subtherapeutic administration of antibiotics also causes animals to gain weight more quickly). In the tight and ripe conditions of a CAFO, an antibiotic-resistant strain of bacteria is likely to evolve under the selective pressure of the given medicine.

“We have abundant evidence documenting the fact that when you put animals in crowded, unsanitary conditions and use low-dose antibiotics for disease prevention, you set up a perfect incubator for spontaneous mutations in the DNA of the bacteria,” Robert Lawrence, Ph.D., a professor emeritus of environmental health at John Hopkins University… The same antibiotics given to animals are used by humans to fight infections. Should an especially infectious and resistant bacteria pop up and pass to humans, doctors might not have an appropriate toolkit to deal with it. SOURCE…

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