Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services.

This quote from The Painters for Human Rights Network has been replaying itself to me frequently after viewing Katie Couric's investigation of the overuse of antibiotics in livestock and its link to increasing antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria in humans. You can read the full story at: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/10/eveningnews/main6195054.shtml. The story documents the Danish success story for removal of routine antibiotic use in their nation's pork industry, and includes an interview with a Danish pork farmer who feared the industry would suffer when the routine use of antibiotics was banned in the pork industry there.

(Article Excerpt) "We don't want to use more medicine than needed, and a lot of the medicine that is given is not needed," said Soren Helmer. Helmer is a second-generation pig farmer whose sows produce more than 30,000 pigs a year. When the ban started, he and his father thought the industry would suffer.
"We thought we could not produce pigs as efficient as we did before," Helmer said. "But that was proven wrong."
Since the ban, the Danish pork industry has grown by 43 percent - making it one of the top exporters of pork in the world. All of Europe followed suit in 2006. But the American Pork Industry doesn't want to in spite of the fact that there are numerous scientific studios proving that the health threat to humans from overuse of antibiotics is real:
"We have identified here that we're talking about a public health issue, that the overuse of antibiotics on farms does pose a risk to human health," said Joshua Sharfstein of the FDA.
The FDA has for the first time come out against using certain antibiotics to promote growth in livestock.
And pending legislation in Congress would ban some types of antibiotics used to treat humans from being administered to healthy farm animals.

I searched around online today for groups taking action to stop the use of routine antibiotic use in livestock, and while I was unable to locate a specific petition or call to action against the practice, I did find another interesting piece on the subject from the Organic Consumers Association.

If anybody out there knows of any organized protest against this practice, I'd love to hear from you. Meanwhile, there are a couple of things that we all can do to help:

We can write to our state representatives. (Though  we may not get the results we are seeking in a timely and efficient matter given the rampant corruption and inefficiency "our leaders" have demonstrated recently.)

More importantly we can remember that we the people hold the power to make positive changes to human and animal health. Our choices at the supermarket speak louder than any words that are likely to fall on those deaf ears in the livestock industry who see this change as a threat to their bottom line. Meat products that are labeled to be antibiotic (and hormone) free cost only a few cents more per pound. It seems like a bargain when you stop to consider that a couple of dollars more at the meat counter could save you a small fortune in medical bills (not to mention your life) by preventing the contraction of an antibiotic resistant infection due to ingesting and/or handling meat that is not antibiotic free. By choosing to purchase only antibiotic free meat, you are sending them an instant message that you want change now. They may not be willing to listen to reason, but I'm betting they will act quickly to change when our choices at the grocery reduces that profit margin they are trying so fiercely to protect.