As if the culpability of the pharmaceutical industry in relation to cruel animal experiments, environmental pollution and profiteering (see pharma truths) weren’t enough to alienate you from their products, we now bring to your attention big pharma lies and antibiotic resistance through scandalous and indiscriminate production, supply and misuse of antimicrobials within the factory farming industry.
Big pharma lies and antibiotic resistance – what is the scale of the problem?
There is a huge and ever-increasing global demand for animal protein with the result that increasingly unpleasant methods of mass production are developed to meet this demand. This has led to an ever-increasing use of antimicrobials within livestock farming to counter infections generated within stock that are kept in filthy conditions.
Big pharma lies would deny the appalling misuse of antimicrobial medication – as promoters of animal growth or as cheap substitutes for basic farming hygiene measures – has been linked to drug-resistant infections and the potentially devastating effects of antibiotic resistance or antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
The evidence for linking AMR between livestock and humans is especially strong with antimicrobial resistance being seen in food-borne pathogens such as salmonella and campylobacter.
Make no mistake, the spectre of AMR could potentially lead to a world without effective antibiotics – this is a terrifying scenario.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has stated that antibiotics are already showing signs of failing and that:
“without urgent action we are heading for a post-antibiotic era in which common infections and minor injuries can once again kill”.
Misuse of antibiotics in factory farming – what are the facts?
Research sources have recently stated that the global market for antibiotics has been estimated at $43 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow to a truly staggering $71.05 billion by 2032 – this represents a compound annual growth rate of approximately 5.20%.
To put these monumental figures into some kind of perspective – a global public article stated that in 2020 the global antibiotic usage was estimated at a monumental 99,502 tonnes/year, which is expected to increase to 107,472 tonnes/year by 2030.
That’s all very well, I hear you say, but where does this fit into the routine daily practice of factory farming? The disturbing truth is that up to 66% of all antibiotics are used routinely on farm animals – this is not therapeutic but merely allows cattle, pigs and poultry to be kept in infected, filthy, inhumane conditions where diseases naturally spread rapidly.
So, the global obsession with consuming the flesh of unfortunate farmed animals is the catalyst for a scenario where millions of people will die each year for the want of effective antibiotics.
Does Big Pharma care? Of course not. The primary goal of Big Pharma is profit. They would not consider ethics for one moment and would see the provision of such huge quantities of antibiotics to the farming industry as a situation of supply and demand – regardless of the havoc being caused to humanity, animals and the environment.
This is reminiscent of the moral bankruptcy of the illegal drug trade, the difference being that the pharmaceutical industry has its corporate lawyers and operates within the law, as it currently stands, with frequent recourse to exploiting any loopholes it may uncover.
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“BE TRULY FREE – BE PHARMA FREE”