Your Vegetables May be Laced with Antibiotics

Careful what you eat, especially if you are allergic to certain antibiotics. Recent studies have shown that some vegetables absorb the antibiotic chemicals from the soil they are grown in. Why? Animal manure.

In our vast food chain, it seems that we have come across the ultimate irony. Humans are now being punished by their own attempts to optimize the animal and plant food industries. Instead of people being superior to animals and plants in the food chain, we're now being "kicked in the pants," so to speak.

Here's the explanation: Animals raised for human consumption are often fed antibiotics in order to make them stronger and larger, making them more marketable animals, according to the Journal of Environmental Quality's report on antibiotic infused crops. In raising these animals, their manure is also collected to be used for soil in raising crops. This manure, used as soil, has now been found to transfer the antibiotics put in the animal feed to the very plants that grow in this soil. In other words, by feeding animals antibiotics to capitalize on the market, we are actual introducing a potential danger in human consumption.

Devastated reactions have come from slow food movements, driving home the point that it is important to know where your food comes from. If you have an allergy to certain antibiotics, it could be very dangerous to consume a potato laced with antibiotics. But, with the way America sells its food in grocery stores, it would be hard to know, wouldn't it? Not only is it hard to figure out which crops have these problems, but it is known that animal manure is very commonly used as soil across the world.

So far, the animal antibiotics have been found in such foods as corn, lettuce, and potatoes. Potatoes have been found to have the highest amounts of these antibiotics because its actual food closely encounters the soil. Actual dangerous effects of this problem have not yet been fully analyzed. In the meantime, it has been advised by study conductors that those with allergies to any sort of antibiotics should be careful.

For more information, visit:
Journal of Environmental Quality
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