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Human living conditions are nowhere near those of livestock.

If we want to drop antibiotics, we're going to end up with significantly increased prices of meat due to increased land usage requirements. This would be ecologically good, but socially disastrous.



Central Europeans eat a lot of meat and somehow they manage to keep prices under control without slamming animals with antibiotics prophylactically. Land and regulatory compliance costs are much higher than in the US too.


Yes, because they the EU farmers are given ridiculous subsidies.


It's far from that simple.

US farms are also subsidised. Maybe to a lesser extent than the EU but it's significant.

There are plenty of farms in the EU that house animals permanantly. I can't speak as to the differences in conditions between US and EU regulations regarding animal housing.

It's not at all clear that banning indiscriminate antibiotic use in the US would render farms financially unviable. There are significant trade barriers that mean that meat producers are somewhat insulated from world competition.

There would probably be a rise in the price of meat, but how significant is hard to say - there may be some research done on this, maybe not. I don't believe that meat in the EU is significantly more expensive than in the US


lol, so are US farmers.


Sooner or later it is going to be socially disastrous anyway.


Perhaps that means that industrial meat production is not sustainable and maybe never can even can be.


Given a choose between faster onsets of more antibiotic resistant bacteria and a higher price of meat, I think a smart policy choice would be the latter, as the former disaster seems a lot harder to manage then the latter.

But maybe this is why I’m not a politician.




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