RE: Super bug bacteria in meat and poultry, study says
Big surprise that the meat industry says the study is "misleading."
Note that that means they can find nothing wrong with either the study itself, or with its conclusions. If they could, they'd automatically escalate their criticism to calling it "flawed."
So how is this "misleading?" They say that most FOOD infections are not caused by staph. So TO THE EXTENT that the study leads people to think that they WILL get a resistant staph infection from this meat, maybe people COULD be misled by the results.
But that is NOT the main concern, here. The main concern is the very common existence of these bugs, and the fact that they have clear channels into the human gut -- where they will stay and breed and wait for our immunities to drop so they can breed out of control.
WHERE you get the infection from matters much less in this case, than WHAT the bug is immune to (most common antibiotics), and HOW you can cure an infection of them (very, very difficult, with these bugs).
So go ahead, buy the meat industry's feel-good base message: that there is nothing to worry about, and that in any case THEY are not at fault for bacterial evolution. But if you do, you've got it exactly wrong.
There IS something very serious to worry about here, and it IS the meat industry's fault that it is happening. They DID evolve these organisms.
Yes its true: if they WEREN'T doing it, it MIGHT still happen through "normal" medical practice, but medicine knows about this and is trying to change their ways.
It's the meat industry who's turned multiple-drug-resistance into such a juggernaut that it might outstrip our every response; and their current denial of responsibility says that they intend to continue the practices that brought us to where we are.
