I'd suggest instead: if you're going to eat meat, be picky about its provenance. Specifically, insist on grass-fed beef (as the corn-based diet of factory cattle is a major contributor to sick cows and the "need" for antibiotics). Voting with your wallet -- thus providing signal to the marketplace that how meat is sourced matters -- is more effective than opting out altogether. Not an option for everyone, but many omnivores could take this approach. Combined with options like "impossible burger" we might be on the verge of a tipping point towards a large and positive change.
It's not about one factory farmer being connected so directly to your specific choices, it's more like: restauranteers and grocers increasingly notice customers insisting on local, humanely raised, grass-fed beef, and thus they reduce their factory-meat order size and quantity. Factory farmer asks why, maybe gets an answer and thinks about improving conditions, or maybe doesn't in which case it's still a net win as the market share shifts in favor of the "good guys".
A major reason, but not the only major reason, and not the largest among major reasons.
Doctors constantly prescribing antibiotics for literally anything (even viruses, which would require an antiviral not an antibiotic), and then patients not taking all of their pills (giving you a double whammy of dumb) is just as bad, or even worse, than meat.
Also, the beef industry in the US has stopped the practice of subtherapeutic antibiotics used for growth. Antibiotics can only be given to beef strictly by on-label usage, thus closing one of the possible routes.
It seems a bit less cut and dry, and still unsolved.
> is just as bad, or even worse, than meat.
"By 2011, a total of 13.6 million kg (30 million lb) of antimicrobials were sold for use in food-producing animals in the United States,[53] which represented 80% of all antibiotics sold or distributed in the United States"
> Antibiotics can only be given to beef strictly by on-label usage, thus closing one of the possible routes.
"The FDA has asked drug companies to voluntarily edit its labels to exclude growth promotion as an indication for antibiotic usage."
Seems to me like it was more of a poorly worded argument rather than "propaganda".
Anyway, what's interesting to me is that doctors are in an impossible position. They want to make their patients happy, not just healthy. And patients equate antibiotics with getting better, thus doctors prescribe antibiotics.
Suggestion: for colds, write a prescribe for an infusion of Camellia sinensis in heated DHMO, to be taken orally once a day with bovine mammary secretions. Call it a “traditional Chinese herbal remedy” if anyone asks.
Caffeine, like other xanthines, also acts as a phosphodiesterase inhibitor.[141] As a competitive nonselective phosphodiesterase inhibitor,[142] caffeine raises intracellular cAMP, activates protein kinase A, inhibits TNF-alpha[143][144] and leukotriene[145] synthesis, and reduces inflammation and innate immunity.[145] Caffeine also affects the cholinergic system where it inhibits the enzyme acetylcholinesterase.
It really shouldn't be to difficult to overcome. In the UK if you go in with an infection, you are quite likely to be told 'its probably viral, so there is no point prescribing antibiotics'
"Antibiotics can only be given to beef strictly by on-label usage"
That's wonderful news, if I understood it correctly. Did you mean that they completely stopped giving antibiotics to cattle unless and until said cattle is sick? Is that a regulation? Does it apply to chicken as well? Any links?
Yes, and they must complete the dosing regiment. I can't find a good link on it, but the regulation is part of the larger 2015 FDA Veterinary Feed Directive.
I'm not sure if it applies to chicken, however Perdue has been trying to save its damaged brand by removing antibiotics also used for humans entirely (about a decade ago), and semi-recently announced that only half of their chicken used any antibiotics at all and none used off-label; they also have antibiotic free sub-brands.
This is notable because Perdue is the third largest chicken product company, after Tyson (Tyson, Jimmy Dean, Hillshire Farm, Sara Lee, Ballpark, Wright's), and JBS (Pilgrim's, Swift, Plumrose), although both Tyson and JBS produce twice (each) as much chicken as Perdue does (giving Perdue 1/5th of the market).
The agriculture industry is a major reason why pesticides, herbicides, destructive monocrops cultures and such, are done. They are responsible for the destruction of the Amazon by planting soyabean monocultures, because of the rich soil.
Both are as horrible as each other.
Both can be done quite sustainably. Problem is that there's not money in doing so, because greed runs the show.