Edit: I forgot to mention  that the article is by Michael Pollan. So it may be less the NY Times taking it’s own stand, as allowing everyone’s favorite sustainable eating author to take one.

In today’s NY Times magazine there is an article about the rising rate of MRSA infections in the US and the fact that the infections now kill more people in the US each year than HIV/AIDs. The article includes these two paragraphs, among others. It’s too bad that the article appeared in the magazine instead of front page as fewer people will likely see it.

The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that at least 70 percent of the antibiotics used in America are fed to animals living on factory farms. Raising vast numbers of pigs or chickens or cattle in close and filthy confinement simply would not be possible without the routine feeding of antibiotics to keep the animals from dying of infectious diseases. That the antibiotics speed up the animals’ growth also commends their use to industrial agriculture, but the crucial fact is that without these pharmaceuticals, meat production practiced on the scale and with the intensity we practice it could not be sustained for months, let alone decades.

…..

As for independent public-health researchers, they say they can’t study the problem without the cooperation of the livestock industry, which, not surprisingly, has not been forthcoming. For what if these researchers should find proof that one of the hidden costs of cheap meat is an epidemic of drug-resistant infection among young people? There would be calls to revolutionize the way we produce meat in this country. This is not something that the meat and the pharmaceutical industries or their respective regulatory “watchdogs” — the Department of Agriculture and F.D.A. — are in any rush to see happen.

The article also discusses the disappearance of honey bees and the likely causes. But the far more interesting part is what it says about pigs.