Associated Antibiotic Resistance

Unlike many people, I don't scold doctor's. I don't hate them. And while I disagree on many issues, it's a matter of education, protocol, and the status quo. 

Here is an intriguing study done by the National Institute of Health regarding Ready-to-Eat-Food (RTEF) and the prevalence of contamination due to antibiotic resistance in the Summer (SU) and Winter (WI). Guys, there is not much we can do to stop this. While doctor's give a substantial amount of antibiotics unnecessarily, we are allowing antibiotics into food that goes to our livestock! Until we can stand up to congress (who apparently has the power to define "organic") we will continue to see, just like the flu, resistant strains. The President has actually made it a policy of his to fight the issue of overly used antibiotics. But I worry our illnesses will take intensive, expensive treatments compared to the past because we allow GMO groups like Monsanto to taunt our food!  

The prevalence of contaminated RTEF in SU was significantly higher than that in WI, increasing from 64 to 92% in chicken salads and from 24 to 64% in chicken burgers (P = 0.001) (Table ​(Table1).1). More specifically, the increase in frequency of contamination in chicken salads in SU was mainly due to contaminated vegetables (from 28% in WI to 43% in SU per vegetable ingredients), making 84% of chicken salads contaminated in SU due to one or more contaminated vegetable ingredients (Table ​(Table1).1). In contrast, the contamination frequency increase in chicken burgers in SU was due to higher prevalence of contaminated meat (from 12% in WI to 24% in SU per ingredient and meal) and also because of a relatively even distribution of contaminated ingredients (17% vegetables, 24% meat, and 14% miscellaneous) across meals, making 64% of chicken burgers contaminated (Table ​(Table1).1). The frequency of contamination in miscellaneous ingredients was similar between the seasons within different meals (Table ​(Table1),1), although the frequency of contamination in chicken burgers during WI (12% of 65 miscellaneous ingredients) was more evenly spread across the meals (making 24% of chicken burgers contaminated due to one or more miscellaneous ingredients) than that in SU (Table ​(Table1).1). The prevalence of enterococci in carrot cakes decreased from 20% in WI to 7% in SU; however, the number of samples was lower than that of other foods due to low availability of carrot cakes in two of the selected restaurants (Table ​(Table11).

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2074946/

The question becomes; Why are we blaming doctor's for antibiotic resistance when the FDA and Congress haven't done anything to address it? And yes, it's true doctor's typically overuse antibiotics, but generally as a precautionary measure and one that we can't scold simply doctors for!