[Pyxl101]

It seems horrendous that we would give antibiotics to any livestock in an across-the-board way.

Livestock should only get antibiotics if they come down with an infection and are diagnosed and treated by a veterinarian. If a bunch of the livestock would get sick without preemptive antibiotics then I probably don't think that method of farming should be legal, and I would be glad to pay whatever higher prices would be necessary to abolish it.

[BurningFrog]

Infections were not created by greedy farmers. They occur naturally among all animal populations.

Some quick googling indicates that this practice both increases meat production by 10-30%, and protects animals from a lot of suffering, as they spend their lives mostly healthy.

That said, yeah, we can't keep doing this, and we have to pay the cost. Let's just not pretend there is no cost.

[Pyxl101]

I'm not saying we should cease treating sick animals. I'm saying only treat the sick animals individually after diagnosing them. If that's not practical then let's change farming practices until it is.

(I'm not a farmer. I have no idea what the impact of this practice would be. However, as a naive person I definitely would strongly prefer to reserve the medicinal powers of antibiotics for humans or individually-sick animals, not huge animal populations.)

[BurningFrog]

I mostly agree. This is already done in many countries, and farming goes on there.

My only point is that this isn't done by stupid greedy farmers for no reason. It's a practical and profitable practice that has had a lot of short term benefits both for farmers, consumers and even farm animals. But it also has to end.