O RLY? (all apologies to John White, the original photographer)
While it's understandable that chicken farms want to go antibiotic free as a lot of people are nervous about abundance of antibiotics in everyday foods, and overuse of antibiotics may lead to "supergerms" that requires new drugs to treat, there are several questions one needs to raise here:
- Does antibiotic use in chicken lead to supergerm for chickens?
- Does supergerm for chickens, if they exist, harm humans?
- Can humans who eat chickens that had been fed antibiotics be harmed?
- Can humans who eat chickens that may have been infected by supergerm be harmed?
- Do people demand antibiotic free chicken?
- Does oregano oil (with a dash of cinnamon) actually work as well as antibiotic for chicken?
Let's look at this one question at a time.
Q: Does antibiotic use in chicken lead to supergerm for chicken?
A: Probably. There have been calls by CDC and others to limit use of human antibiotics on food animals. No conclusive proof yet.
Q: Does supergerms for chickens, if they exist, harm humans?
A: Probably exist, may harm humans, as the antibiotics are designed to kill the germs, leaving the drug-resistant supergerms behind. No conclusive proof yet.
Q: Can humans who eat chickens that had been fed antibiotics be harmed?
A: Unlikely. Germs, even supergerms, don't survive the cooking process. In general only meat that are improperly cooked would pass on the germs.
Q: Can humans who eat chickens that may have been infected by supergerm be harmed?
A: Unlikely. Germs, even supergerms, do not survive the cooking process.
Q: Do people demand antibiotic free chicken?
A: Probably. Many retail stores such as Trader Joe, Costco, and Whole Foods claim that they can never find enough anti-biotic free meat to satisfy their demands. Why this is so is not relevant.
Q: Does oregano oil (with a dash of cinnamon) actually work as well as antibiotic for chicken?
A: No data. Bayer apparently did a test of oregano oil on piglets and mice decades ago. The results are not promising, worse than actual antibiotics, according to the same article. Further studies failed to replicate the initially promising results. Other tests on other species did not yield much success either.
As the aforementioned chicken farm also do very good health control by instituting a full cleaning with full disinfection after the chicken had been harvested, it is far more likely that those measures, instead of oregano oil (with a dash of cinnamon) had been warding off the germs.
Oregano oil is NOT a direct substitute for antibiotics. There is no proof for such yet.
What does this have to do with scams?
A lot of nutritional supplements makes similar claims, except they have secret formulations and ingredients instead of commonly found herbs and spices.
http://doubtfulnews.com/2012/12/thats-italian-chicken-farmers-check-out-oil-of-oregano/
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/26/science/chicken-farms-try-oregano-as-antibiotic-substitute.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1
No comments:
Post a Comment