When Food Kills Essay Example for Free

When Food Kills Essay An outbreak causing the death of 31 people in Europe is causing wide speculation of the agriculture industry. The outbreak, caused by E. coli, supposabley arose from bean sprouts grown in an organic farm in Germany. All over the world food-borne illnessess are hopstitalizing and even killing people. Just in the United states 325,000 people are hospitalized and 5,ooo die every year because of the wide spread of food-borne illnessess. Farmers all over the world use antibiotics to rapidly increase the growth of there livestock, causing resistant pathogenes, which can ultimately become untreatable, though they still continue and process the meat. Most people do not know that more antibiotics are givin to livestock than humans, endangering our health even more. MRSA, one of the most common antibiotic-resistant pathogenes is now widespread in hog barns, even people who deal with them. Unlike the United States, other countries are begining to ban distributing antibiotics to livestock. In the article Kristof often gives the audience facts concerning food outbreaks. To keep the readers interested, and believe what they are reading Kristof uses statistics, such as when he stated that 70 percent of hogs were found with MRSA in only one farm. He also plays an emotional toll on the audience,for example, when he recalled the story of skydiving instructer, Josh Nahum developed a life threatening fever, caused by a bactiera that wasnt responsive to medication. He became paralyzed after parts of his brain started to push into his spinal column. After a couple weeks of using a ventilator to breathe, he died. Learning about how serious and the amout of lives food-borne illnessess take it brings more attention to the problem, and also keeps Kristofs readers engaged in the article. In my opinion, feeding livestock antibiotics in their feed, to make their growth rate rise rapidly, is not only extremely harmful to the livestock, but more importantly, to humans. To have the animals develope much faster that normal is not worth thousands of people dying over it. Though the unsanitary ways both small, and larger scale restaraunts handle their food is also a big cause for food-borne illnesses. Even in our own homes many people are not being as sanitary as they need to be. If everyone would stop and continue with their work but maintain it in a clean and sanitary way, especially if they are working in the food industry, I believe there wouldnt be as many food-borne illnessess, especially if they are working in the food industry.