Antibiotics in our Food? How it Happened with Maryn McKenna

The discovery of antibiotics hailed the dawn of a new era in medicine. Once fatal infections were suddenly treatable with the arrival of these magic bullet cures. This golden era is waning, however. Today, we face a rising crisis of antimicrobial resistance with more than 700,000 deaths per year across the globe due to now untreatable infections. The broad use of antibiotics in humans and agriculture has created the conditions for evolution of resistance among microbes. But, how did we get here? Why and when did antibiotics come to be so commonplace in agriculture? How did they come to be used as “growth promoters” in livestock rearing practices? In this episode, I speak with award winning author and journalist, Maryn McKenna, who has written extensively on the antibiotic resistance crisis. We take a deep dive into the history of how antibiotics became commonplace in agriculture and how this has impacted human health. 

#Antibiotics #Chicken #Agriculture