My mymonofs chair report was due on Wednesday the 13th of January. I submitted the report earlier on in the holiday. My topic was about Tackling the proliferation of Antibiotic resistance. Antibiotic resistance is a topic that we have previously learnt about in science. I knew hoe antibiotic resistance worked but not about the solutions that were being implemented, as well as the many the stakeholders. For example, Big Pharma and Meat industries play large roles in this issue. Antibiotics are necessary and aren’t very profitable, big Pharma companies aren’t incentivised to research and develop new antibiotics as they aren’t very profitable, however it very necessary that they do.

Here is an extract on the Meat industry stakeholder paragraph I wrote Meat is often mass-produced to ensure that consumers can buy cheap food such as fast-food. To mass-produce meat from farm animals, cattle are often kept in cramped conditions which are unhygienic and serve as breeding grounds for bacteria. To combat bacterial growth, farmers feed their cattle antibiotics. According to the NCBI “It is estimated, at present, that 40 per cent of the antibiotics produced are used for feed additives. Estimates allocate 0.5 million kg to the cattle industry, 1.0 million kg to poultry, 1.4 million kg to swine, and 0.4 million kg to other animals such as companion animals.” As a major consumer of the good, the meat industry has a role to play in solving this crisis. When animals develop resistance to antibiotics which is fed to them this can be passed to humans. In 2015, China announced that they found Colistin resistant bacteria. Colistin was used as a last resort antibiotic only given in extreme situations and wasn’t widely used. However, Colistin was fed to farm animals, who likely passed the resistant bacteria to humans. Due to rapid globalisation, this resistant bacteria could spread throughout the world.  The meat industry can look towards producing meat in more ethical and sustainable ways which could require fewer antibiotics while still trying to keep the price for meat low.” Learning about the meat industry in this issue made me realise how unsustainable the meat industry is. Not only does it take up a lot of resources to produce meat to the point there if the fish, vegetables and food we feed to cattle were to be given to humans world hunger could be eradicated. Producing meat also creates a lot of carbon emissions. I already knew that but to add on the effects of potentially creating antibiotic-resistant superbugs from overfeeding antibiotics to animals I was extremely surprised. Considering the ethical implications of eating and supporting the meat industry I think I will continue to be a vegetarian. I have tried to be vegetarian for a year so far, but once I finished the challenge I had no real reason to continue. Though I have had a cheat day or two I think I will continue to try to not eat any meat. Other than that I have also decided to be more aware of when I take antibiotics to ensure that I consume them responsibly.

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