[mschuster91]

Well the current problematic situation of animals is relatively well contained to the Western sphere (US, EU, maybe China).

The Chinese already recognize the effects on nature, the EU too (and iirc they're already beginning to introduce measures), the biggest problem is and always will be the US because of the huge influence of the farming lobby on US politics (and even if that was not the case, then the grid-lock between D/R where everyone boycotts bills from the other side, just because. Brain-dead US politics.)

[vanilla-almond]

"the biggest problem is and always will be the US"

Did you see the chart from another poster above? Many European countries like Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy have very high levels of antibiotic usage in agriculture

http://i.imgur.com/9ybmhwE.jpg

I live in Europe, and am well aware of the common belief among many Europeans that we have excellent and high animal welfare standards. But the reality is that animal welfare standards also vary greatly between countries.

That chart above clearly demolishes the view that overuse of antibiotics is a problem principally for non-European countries.

[davidw]

The article actually specifically calls out agriculture in China:

"The Chinese resistance cases were down to overuse of antibiotics in agriculture."

[invaliddata]

A number of sources I've found indicate that (see links below for sources): 1) China consumes about 50% of the total global antibiotic production (roughly half for agriculture and half for human use). 2) Per capita human consumption of antibiotics is on the order of 10 times greater in China compared to the US.

Some of these articles are several years old, and from sources I'd classify as more internal than foreign. It is likely that these figures would be conservative.

If this data is approximately correct, I think we could say that 1) China has an outsized effect on the problem of antibiotic resistance (even considering it's large population). 2) The US problem of antibiotic use is mostly an agricultural one (which deserves a lot of attention), and the Chinese overuse of antibiotics is not confined to either human or agricultural use.

I'm sure the chinese leadership is aware of the issue, and given their ability to make changes when something is very important (ie, air pollution during high profile events), the fact that little has been done is telling. It is likely that this simply isn't a high priority issue and thus we are unlikely to see any movement on it anytime soon.

http://china.org.cn/china/2015-07/14/content_36057168.htm http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-07/14/c_134411007.htm http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2103733,00...

[mschuster91]

Yes, but at least in China there is the political will to tackle environment issues. The US is still locked and highly corrupt :/

[gozur88]

When you can't breathe your concern about the environment goes up markedly. The reason you don't see as much concern in the US is we've already tackled the obvious, major problems.

At one time in the US there were rivers you could set alight, but that was a long time ago.

[refurb]

"Political will"?

That's an interesting way to describe a dictatorship!

[Betelgeuse90]

South America is extremely problematic as well in that regard.