Antibiotic Use in Animals & the Alarming Uptick in ΓÇ£SuperbugsΓÇ¥
By
Jane Farrell
The Rise of Antibiotics
Antibiotics have been used since the 1940s ΓÇö and their discovery has led to a dramatic reduction in illness and death from infectious diseases. And that's great. BUT... the extensive (read: overuse) of antibiotic medication has resulted in drug resistance that threatens to reverse the medical advances of the last seventy years, according to he federal Interagency Task Force on Antimicrobial Resistance. So what does this mean? Antibiotics have been used so widely and for so long, and are so often prescribed when not needed, that antibiotic resistance has become a major public health threat.