Curtailing antibiotic use in agriculture

Modelling the impact of curtailing antibiotic usage in food animals on antibiotic resistance in humans

Consumption of antibiotics in food animals is increasing worldwide and is approaching, if not already surpassing, the volume consumed by humans. It is often suggested that reducing the volume of antibiotics consumed by food animals could have public health benefits. Although this notion is widely regarded as intuitively obvious there is a lack of robust, quantitative evidence to either support ...

Pesticide use in agriculture.

During the last three decades, the use of modern organic synthetic pesticides has increased about 40-fold. Total U.S. production, for domestic and expert use, in 1976 was about 1.4 million pounds. Crops receiving the most intensive application of various pesticides were cotton for insecticides, corn for herbicides, and fruits and vegetables for fungicides. Examination of use trends of pesticide...

Human health impacts of antibiotic use in agriculture: A push for improved causal inference.

Resistant bacterial infections in humans continue to pose a significant challenge globally. Antibiotic use in agriculture contributes to this problem, but failing to appreciate the relative importance of diverse potential causes represents a significant barrier to effective intervention. Standard epidemiologic methods alone are often insufficient to accurately describe the relationships between...

Curtailing tobacco use: first we need to know the numbers.

www.thelancet.com Vol 380 August 18, 2012 629 Data, transformed through aggregation and analysis into useful information, are key elements for decision making. This notion is true in general and has become a precept for promotion of health and control of disease. Tobacco use globally is the main preventable contributor to poor health and premature death. In The Lancet, Gary Giovino and colleagu...

Energy Use in American Agriculture