Word: enrofloxacin
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...birds in a so-called grow-out building have started snickering--the chicken equivalent of coughing. A respiratory infection, if that's what they have, could spread to the 20,000 other birds in the chicken house in a matter of days. The vet recommends the antibiotic enrofloxacin--the animal version of Cipro. Since it's not practical to treat the birds individually, the farmer pours a 5-gal. jug of the drug into the flock's drinking water. Five days later the birds are doing fine. Disaster has been averted...
...While enrofloxacin kills the type of bacteria that sickened the chickens, it doesn't quite eliminate a different strain, called Campylobacter, that lives in the intestine. The surviving germs, which don't cause any poultry diseases, quickly multiply and spread the genes that helped them fend off the antibiotic. Six weeks later, when the broilers are carved up at the slaughterhouse, resistant bacteria spill out everywhere. Even with the best sanitary controls, some campylobacter is shrink-wrapped along with the thighs, breasts and drumsticks that are delivered to your kitchen counter...
...days. And if you're sick enough to need medical treatment, you might be out of luck. Chicken Cipro is so closely related to human Cipro that any germ that has become resistant to the animal drug can shrug off the human one just as easily. Before 1996, when enrofloxacin was approved in the U.S. for use in poultry, the number of Campylobacter infections in people that were resistant to Cipro and its chemical cousins was negligible. By 1999, it had jumped to 18%--a clear sign, many researchers argue, that at least part of the increase is directly tied...
...meantime, the FDA is so concerned about the possibility of losing Cipro and similar drugs that it has asked pharmaceutical companies to stop selling them to poultry farmers. Bayer, which manufactures both Cipro and enrofloxacin, is contesting the idea, arguing that resistance levels have stabilized and can be managed...
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