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COPYRIGHT 2002 Australian Consumers' Association
Essential life-saving antibiotics are becoming less effective as bacteria become resistant to them. Today we're faced with a number of infectious bacteria that are resistant to almost all known antibiotics.
Although misuse and overuse of antibiotics in human medicine are by far the main causes of the rise in antibiotic-resistant `superbugs', antibiotic use in food-producing animals is a contributory factor. It's their use as growth promoters in intensively reared animals (mainly chickens, pigs and feedlot cattle) that's being questioned in relation to the part this plays in the development of bacteria that can't be killed by antibiotics.
We checked for the presence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in chicken to see if it's really a problem. The results suggest that it is (see Chooks on test, far right).
WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?
We checked chickens bought from supermarkets for the antibiotic-resistant bug vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE).
VRE is particularly a problem in hospitals, as vancomycin is often used there as a last line of defence to treat infection. If you have VRE, the bugs usually sit in your body quite happily doing no damage--if you're healthy and stay that way, there's no problem. But if you have to go to hospital for invasive surgery, for example, or if you're already seriously ill, that's when even more serious problems can arise.
If you get some kind of infection you'll be given antibiotics to treat it, and they'll kill off all the bugs except those that are resistant. And VRE, being resistant to almost all antibiotics, can then flourish and invade your body...
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