Thurston County must draw line on antibiotics overuse

The overuse and misuse of antibiotics has led to ever more powerful infectious diseases, like MRSA, multidrug-resistant TB, and C. difficile, just to name a few. In the U.S., over 80 percent of antibiotics are used for livestock – not people – and most of those antibiotics are wasted on animals that aren’t even sick.

Medical researchers warn that, if we don’t stop wasting antibiotics this way, we will lose effective antibiotics in our lifetime. That would mean no more knee replacements, no more gall bladder surgeries – even no more appendectomies – and certainly no more heart surgeries, without a high risk of death from infection! I don’t want our grandchildren to grow up in a world without antibiotics.

It’s time for Thurston County to be the next county in the state to support a ban on non-therapeutic antibiotic use in livestock.

This story was originally published October 7, 2015 at 1:46 PM with the headline "Thurston County must draw line on antibiotics overuse."