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by mschuster91
1278 days ago
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The biggest risk factor when it comes to infection in general is agriculture: - We encroach ever closer and closer to reservoirs of animal illnesses, which is how we got OG SARS, MERS and Covid. - We give farm animals prophylactic antibiotics to promote growth or, worse, keep them alive in completely unsanitary conditions, and the conditions in slaughterhouses are often horrible as well. That is not just plain horrible from an animal welfare aspect, but risks breeding superbugs on one side and severe complications should someone not properly cook their meat and not kill off all the bacteria. - We spread manure from farm animals over produce fields, which regularly causes e.coli / EHEC outbreaks Antibiotic overuse in humans is only a small part of the problem, simply because the agriculture scale is so much bigger, and even people who go vegan/vegetarian because they want to avoid all the issues with meat production still can't avoid their produce being contaminated. |
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You do not want to stop this. Topsoil is a damn complicated thing, and bacteria and other decomposers are critical to freeing up and breaking down organic material to keep the nutrient cycle going. Try growing a plant in a sterile soil, and you end up having to maintain it on artificial fertilizers instead of being able to let microbiota do their thing.
I've got a hunch part of our degradation in crop nutrition and loss of topsoil quality is probably stemming from overuse of chemical fertilizer, as well as fundamental microbiome depletion from overuse of antibiotics in industrial farming processes. The unfortunate part being there may not be much to be done about it if there is a desire to maintain our current population carry capacity, because replenishing of it would require reversion to less short-term efficient agriculture, but more long term sustainable methods.