Just Say No To Antibacterial Burgers

Read a good Washington Post article about the extreme use of antibiotics in our livestock and food supply. An astonishing 70% of antibiotics used in the US are used for the raising of livestock (primarily in disease prevention rather than treatment). That means were are steadily getting small doses of antibiotics through our food supply our entire lives. But those antibiotics lets us keep our food cheap and accessible for the masses, right? How could we eliminate it? I thought this excerpt was good:

There's also the argument that the pennies we're saving on each burger are being spent in our hospitals. A 2005 study out of Tufts University estimated that antibiotic-resistant infections add $50 billion to the annual cost of American health care. On the other side of the coin, a National Academy of Sciences study found that eliminating non-therapeutic antibiotics from animals would cost only about $5 to $10 per person per year. I'd pay that for a lower risk of super-staphylococcus.

That's very reasonable.