Cows on Drugs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmg_yggrgVM

Key Ideas:

• In 2005, one class of antibiotics, fluoroquinolones, was banned in the production of poultry in the United States, but the total number of antibiotics used in agriculture is continuing to grow.
• Many associations are urging Congress to phase out the nontherapeutic use in livestock of antibiotics that are important to humans.
• Congress should now pass the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, which would ban industrial farms from using seven classes of antibiotics that are important to human health under certain conditions.
• The pharmaceutical industry and agribusiness face the difficult challenge of developing antimicrobials that work specifically against animal infections without undermining the fight against bacteria that cause disease in humans.

Reflection:
I thought this article was hard to read because it didn't hold my attention for long. It is an interesting topic, but the the author used too many long words that made the article draw out longer. It was about trying to stop people from giving human antibiotics to animals to improve their production. I think this is important that this should be done so that people won't get sick as much and there won't be as many deaths from antibiotic poisoning from animals. This course helped me to understand this topic because we studied genetically modified organisms.

MLA: Kennedy, Donald. "Cows on Drugs." The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. 12 May 2010. Web. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/opinion/18kennedy.html.