Bits and Pieces: Antibiotics in Animal Feed and Harmful Chemicals in Toiletries

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PHOTO: KYBELE/FOTOLIA
Despite the benefits to animals of using antibiotics in animal feed it can cause health risks to people.

Antibiotics in Animal Feed

FDA’s Donald Kennedy is pushing for a ban on the use of antibiotics in animal feeds. Feedlot managers have long claimed that the drugs cause animals to gain weight faster, but scientists are concerned that the indiscriminate use of penicillin and other antibiotics in feeds is increasing the number of drug-resistant bacteria in the environment. (Such bacteria are now a serious health problem worldwide.) Kennedy — addressing an FDA advisory committee — asked for tough rules governing the use of antibiotics in feeds, saying: “The benefit of using these drugs routinely as over-the-counter products to help animals grow faster … does not outweigh the potential risk posed to people.

Benefits of City Life 

In a 20-year follow-up of the famous Midtown Manhattan Study (which concluded that 23 percent of New York City’s East Side residents were in need of psychiatric help), Columbia University sociologist Leo Srole finds that the mental health of New Yorkers is now about twice as good as it was in 1954, when the Midtown study commenced. Moreover, Srole cites evidence that mental health in general “is more favorable in big population centers — including New York as the biggest — than in smaller ones.”

Nerve Gas Research  

  • Published on Jul 1, 1977
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