From the December 19th issue of Bloomberg Businessweek on Chinese agricultural practices -
"The Chinese government is well aware that the use of antibiotics has gotten out of hand. In 2001 it initiated a campaign to reduce antibiotic use in humans, and since then the sale of antibiotics in Shanghai has fallen 31 percent. As last month's ban on colistin suggests, there's a new seriousness about antibiotic use in agricultural production as well. Nevertheless, China's rates of drug resistance remain among the highest in the world. Surveys across the country have found 42 percent to 83 percent of healthy people carry in their bowels bacteria that produce extended-spectrum beta-lactamases, or ESBLs, which create reservoirs of potential pathogens that can destroy penicillin and most of its variants. The aquaculture products sold in Shanghai teem with bacteria that can't be killed by common antibiotics. In almost a third of random seafood samples collected in Shanghai from 2006 to 2011, researchers found salmonella, a major cause of gastroenteritis in people. A closer examination of the germs showed that 43 percent of the samples harbored multidrug resistant strains of bacteria."
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.