MRSA? MRDA.

[avevale_intelligencer]

Sparked off by pbristow:

We are gradually and painfully absorbing the fact that people are neither completely good, nor completely evil, and that portraying them as such in a story is less than plausible. And yet the story we are being told about our food seems, on the face of it, just that implausible. There are "good" foods (vegetables, preferably raw) and "evil" foods (just about everything else) and all the "good" foods are nothing but good for us, and all the "evil" foods keep getting more and more scary stories told about them. I've been trying to think of a health scare story linked to carrots, or cabbage, or Brussels sprouts, and I can't. Red meat, on the other hand, just keeps getting them piled on. Cancer, heart disease, strokes, gods know what all. Now medical experts are apparently saying that bacon is what has given rise to MRSA, and not hospitals at all.

Well, they would say that, wouldn't they. :)

Comments

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

It's not bacon as such, though the "hook" of the story doesn't make that very clear. It's the practice of giving antibiotics to meat animals that aren't sick. Apparently this makes the animals gain weight faster. The downside, which has been known for a long time, is that when antibiotics are abundant in the environment, bacteria that are resistant to them have an advantage over bacteria that aren't, and antibiotic resistant bacteria become common. The only part of this that is news is that a particular strain of antibiotic resistant bacteria has been, unsurprisingly, found to be associated with pigs.

Meanwhile both spinach and tomatoes have been linked to E. coli outbreaks in the news--tomatoes several times--and apples have been "outed" as being contaminated with pesticides, and so on.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

It's not bacon as such, though the "hook" of the story doesn't make that very clear. It's the practice of giving antibiotics to meat animals that aren't sick.

Not in this country, at least, not legally. This is a large bone of contention between the EU (where it is not practiced) and the USA, where it is... rather like GM foods, really.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Not in this country, at least, not legally.

Granted. I was making the point that it's not the consumption of meat that's being held up as unhealthful in this article, but rather this aspect of its production in the US.