File this under intriguing. From Ag Professional (via a press release, I think)
A new ad campaign is asking area commuters and people visiting Capitol Hill “Who’s hogging our antibiotics?”
The series of ads, revealed in D.C. Metro stations and trains this week by the Pew Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming, is part of the project’s national effort to end the misuse of antibiotics in food animal production. The group says up to 70 percent of human antibiotics are being fed to animals on factory farms, promoting the development of deadly strains of drug-resistant bacteria that can spread to humans.
“Human antibiotics are routinely misused on industrial farms to compensate for crowded, stressful and unsanitary conditions,” said Laura Rogers, a project director with the Pew Health Group. “The way we are raising our food animals is putting human health at risk.”
The ads can be seen in the Capitol South and Union Station Metro stops during June, as well as in Metro cars on the red and blue/orange line trains. A version of the ads will also be appearing soon online and in newspapers on Capitol Hill.
There is currently a bill that would restrict sub-therapeutic use of antibiotics pending in both the House and Senate (as well as one working its way through the California legislature).
And on the other end of the spectrum, you have the new worldwide advocacy group Avaaz.org, a collaboration between Moveon.org and Res Publica (with the SIEU as a major funder), with an anti-CAFO petition that garnered 200,000 signatures in six days. Is the anti-CAFO movement approaching critical mass…?
