Antibiotics and Livestock Production: Affecting Cattles and Produce Alike
During the middle of the semester, my group and I worked on the issues of not how meat was produced, but of the antibiotics that were contained in them that not only affected meat eaters, but vegetarian consumers. Alyssa Arroyo, Jaslee Carayol, Kim Happich, and myself, Theodora M. Telfort, collectively constructed a poster to provide accurate information regarding this new exploration. Inspired from Arroyo’s research topic, we began to understand how antibiotics were used and how it not only affected the human environment and other species as well. Based on the circular model shown on the poster, it explains how antibiotics have an effect on livestock production in our world. In order to truly get a sense of what antibiotics do, it is important to know its purpose and use of design. These chemical elements are utilized to provide and guarantee safe and healthy growth and reproduction rates, in addition to reducing mortality rates. Antibiotics were originally used to fight the spreading of diseases that were located in commercial feeds of animals. What may be frightening to discover and to share is that the same antibiotics that were used to kill of certain diseases to protect the livestock, have been contaminated in foods that that not only consumers in the meat industry consume, but non-meat eaters as well. The process of recycling and reproducing animal waste has been the most recent explored resource to deal with the large quantities of waste created by livestock farms. Livestock farmers do this manure waste production by selling it to agricultural farms. Once these farms have received the waste, they then restructure them as fertilizers. A special name that has been given to manure is called biosolids. In addition to the cattle produced and grown on livestock farms, plants that grow in fertilized soil coming from these types of crops are filled with the elements of the biosolids. This means that the plants fertilized with soil, will have contained elements of antibiotics that were initially expelled from the antibiotics. The main continuous theme that was presented in this particular research was the comprehension of how antibiotics would feed onto other living organisms, specifically in the growing of plants or ‘water-based tissues.” Antibiotics are used and consumed in a copious amount of crops that are then purchased by non-meat eaters ,vegetarians and fish. Examples of antibiotics such as Baytril and Cipro were traces and discovered in various vegetable foods including lettuce, potatoes, and radishes. Due to the mistreatment of such goods that affect not only the well-being of humans and oceanic species, the effectiveness of antibiotics can also cause destruction to our environment as well. Other remaining amounts of antibiotics also have an unfortunate effect on our water system. The chemicals harm our water system by entering into it via the agricultural farms.
