Bad bugs the new white meat? As reported by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times recently (Sun, Mar 15 th , "Pathogens in Our Pork), hog farms are now infected with the dangerous bug known as MRSA (pronounced " Mersa "). As estimated by the University of Minnesota, up to 39 percent of pigs on hog farms harbor the superbugs which are resistant to almost all forms of antibiotics. (More people die from MRSA in the United States than from HIV.) Why? Same reason as why doc's give out prescriptions to treat viral infections like colds and ear infections: mis -use of antibiotics. As Kristof writes, more antibiotics are given to livestock in North Carolina alone than goes to treat the entire U.S. population. This is all due to the tremendous leverage that the agribusinesses have on Washington politicoes . The citizenry is being plowed under for the sake of increasing the yield of hog, cow and chicken farmers. It's as if the Congress is doing as Marie Antoinette, s
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