Activists should be protesting overuse of antibiotics, not GMOs

Anti-GMO activists are fighting the wrong battle, argues Steven Salzberg, a contributor in Forbes. They should be tackling the overuse use of antibiotics in farm animals, not the “few genetic changes” in crops.

Administrating antibiotics to farm animals so they’ll grow faster is exceedingly more dangerous than genetically modifying crops, Salzberg writes. Continuous use of antibiotics induces the rise of so-called ‘super bugs,’ bacteria that are resistant to the current versions of antibiotics. Drug-resistant super bugs kill 23,000 people per year, according to the CDC.

He claims that lobbying from the farming industry has effectively blocked the Food and Drug Administration from regulating the use of antibiotics on farms. He writes that if activists are going to insist on labeling, they should be “showing whether our food animals were raised antibiotic free.”

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Read the full, original story here: “GMOs Versus Overuse Of Antibiotics: Which Is The Greater Evil?”

Additional Resources

• “Report: Feeding antibiotics to livestock is bad for humans, but Congress won’t stop it,” Washington Post