INTRODUCTION

There’s a kind of doomsday feel to things right now - have you noticed? It’s not just that the Mayan calendar runs out on December 21st of next year. It’s not even the plethora of new warnings from astrophysicists, doctors and geologists about the possibly catastrophic events that are now known to be on the not-too-distant horizon. It has more to do with the zeitgeist, an undifferentiated sense that things can’t go on like they are forever.
And, of course, there are clues. Almost daily, items half-buried in news reports point to the Doom scenarios just lurking around the corner. Maybe you are too busy or too trapped in denial to notice them all, so this blog is here to help you keep track.

Friday, 18 November 2011

Something to Worry About Today

Grim news from medical researchers: your breakfast may kill you.

This warning isn’t the conventional one about dietary health. Abuse of antibiotics in meat production is bringing about a new crisis in human infections, the Lancet has warned. The journal denounced the “prophylactic” use of common antibiotics in pig and poultry farming.

By administering antibiotics to healthy animals to prevent their getting sick, the constantly mutating bacteria that cause illness in animals may be more likely to infect humans. Pathogens once easily dealt with in the “antibiotic age” have become resistant.  Already more than 25,000 people die each year from resistant strains in the UK alone.

The practice of wholesale dosing of farm animals, coupled with the slowed-down production of new antibiotics as firms withdraw research for financial reasons, has left the arsenals of doctors dangerously under-stocked. In trying to keep healthy the sources of bacon and eggs, farmers may be helping to kill off their breakfast-eating customers.

Muesli anyone?
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