agriculture

Since I'm off to Woods Hole to give a lecture about antibiotic resistance, I thought this interview from the old site with Dr. Henrik C. Wegener about antibiotics and agriculture would be appropriate. In looking through some things at work, I came across this interview with Henrik C. Wegener, Ph.D., Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Antimicrobial Research and Foodborne Pathogens and the Danish Institute for Food and Veterinary Research about antibiotics and agriculture. It's from 2004, but it's still pretty good (it's interesting how, on the internet, once something gets past two…
Lest you think corporate interference in public health policy is solely a U.S. problem, New Zealand is suffering a brain drain in the area of antibiotic resistance research due to political pressure hindering research on the effects of antbiotic use in agriculture. Worldwide, antibiotics are widely used in poultry production, but in the U.S., there was a successful attempt to ban the use of enrofloxacin (a ciprofloxacin analogue commonly known as "Cipro") in poultry production (enrofloxacin is already banned in other forms of meat production). From the Sunday Star Times: Scientists say…