Herbicides, Heavy Metals and Factory Farms All Contribute to Antibiotic Resistance

April 29, 2015- The environmental community condemns two common Big Agriculture practices: feeding antibiotics to livestock and spraying herbicides on conventional crops. One study predicted that antibiotic use in livestock will soar by two-thirds globally from 2010 to 2030, and another declared that Monsanto's popular Roundup herbicide is "probably carcinogenic to humans."
The use of common herbicides, such as Roundup, Kamba and 2,4-D may contribute to antibiotic resistance, according to another study.

Antibiotic-resistant infections take the lives of more than 23,000 Americans every year. The WHO and the CDC have warned of the threat posed to public health. Antibiotic resistance stemming from overuse in livestock also is the target of a bill re-introduced in Congress in March.

Environmental health advocates predict the use of herbicides will continue to rise as farmers plant more genetically modified seeds engineered to survive weedkillers. The EPA recently approved Enlist seeds, designed for use with a mix of 2,4-D and glyphosate, the chief ingredient in Roundup.

When the disease-causing bacteria -- E. coli and salmonella -- was exposed to high enough levels of herbicide, researchers recently found that the microbes could survive up to six times more antibiotic than if they hadn't been exposed to herbicide. They studied five common classes of the drugs: ampicillin, chloramphenicol, ciprofloxacin, kanamycin and tetracycline.
"In a sense, the herbicide is 'immunizing' the bacteria to the antibiotic," said Jack Heinemann, lead author of the study and researcher at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.

Read the full huffingtonpost.com post here.

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