In Europe and America, where animal factories are widespread, people are showing up in hospitals with infections that are resistant to four or five different antibiotics. In the U.S. 14,000 deaths per year are attributed to drug-resistant microbes. It is crazy to undermine the effectiveness of antibiotics, the greatest health breakthrough of the twentieth century, just to make cheaper meat. Doctors are pleading for the control of antibiotics in the meat industry. Both the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization have issued stern warnings, which in the U.S. have not been turned into government regulation.
Meat producers are major campaign contributors.
Raising animals in concentration camps is a bad idea for a dozen reasons, ranging from cruelty to drug resistance to unmanageable manure piles. If we don't end this practice, it will end itself, when antibiotics can no longer stave off diseases. There are still farms that raise animals in natural, healthy conditions, with space, light, and movement, and without feeding antibiotics. Turn your consumer power in their direction. Ask at McDonald's.