{"id":1489,"date":"2014-09-22T10:02:23","date_gmt":"2014-09-22T17:02:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.loghouseplants.com\/blogs\/greengardening\/?p=1489"},"modified":"2014-09-22T10:02:23","modified_gmt":"2014-09-22T17:02:23","slug":"safer-antibiotics-and-safer-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.loghouseplants.com\/blogs\/greengardening\/2014\/09\/safer-antibiotics-and-safer-food\/","title":{"rendered":"Safer Antibiotics and Safer Food"},"content":{"rendered":"

Preserving Health And Well Being, Naturally<\/strong><\/p>\n

I recently saw yet another article protesting the need to raise food crops organically. Really? Really?? Anybody who doubts the validity of the organic food movement is not paying attention to the daily news. Like what? Hmm, let\u2019s see. How about this? American chicken farmers (or might we better say producers?) are lobbying hard for the legal right to ship chickens from America to China for processing before shipping them back home for consumers.<\/p>\n

Why? American food safety precautions are too burdensome and expensive for poor underpaid big-scale farmers. So…after the recall of American company, Foster Farms\u2019s salmonella-tainted chicken in March of this year, we are happily gearing up to send chicken to China, where, oh, yeah, a huge scandal broke in July of this same year because of contaminated processed meat supplied to thousands of outlets…. Wait, really? Really. I am not making this up. Sadly.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.foodsafetynews.com\/2013\/09\/how-chinese-processed-chicken-was-approved-for-export-to-usa\/<\/strong><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2014\/07\/29\/world\/asia\/explainer-china-meat-scandal\/<\/strong><\/p>\n

Deadly And Stupidly Irresponsible Tactics<\/strong><\/p>\n

An estimated 23,000 people die each year because bacterial infections prove resistant to over-used antibiotics. Attention is finally being directed Sadly, the bulk of antibiotic use (and overuse) is agricultural, not in homes and hospitals. Government estimates indicate that more than 70% of antibiotics are given to farmed animals, mainly chickens, cows, and pigs. Much of this antibiotic use is prophylactic, intended to keep animals healthy enough to be marketable despite stressful and skirting-the-law unsanitary conditions. Ack!!!<\/p>\n

On September 18, the Obama administration finally unveiled its plan to do something constructive about the increasing risks of antibiotic resistance. There are some good guidelines here for reducing at least some of the public health and ecological risks, but amazingly, amending the irresponsible and culpably reckless factory farm antibiotic abuses, which account for the most public health issues, are not included in the government\u2019s plan. Those 23,000 annual deaths must not count because the people who paid the penalty for antibiotic abuse are no longer able to speak for themselves.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a link to the new national strategy:<\/strong><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/sites\/default\/files\/docs\/carb_national_strategy.pdf<\/strong><\/p>\n

Too Much Is Too Much<\/strong><\/p>\n

However, we still have to do our part at home and at work to reduce antibiotic overuse. People like me who wash hands many, many times a day can be contributing more to the problem than we realize if we use antibiotic hand soaps. A squirt here, a squirt there, it all adds up to a lot of free-range antibiotics set loose to roam our waterways.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s ironic that one of the miracles of our age can protect us from diseases that were fatal for millennia and also threaten our health and well being in the all-too-close future. For millions of years, dirty hands could be deadly. Sir Joseph Lister\u2019s groundbreaking sterile surgery protocols started saving lives back in the 1880s, but enough is better than too much. As harmful bacteria gain resistance to antiseptics, diseases like pneumonia are once again becoming fatal. In addition, recent research suggests that children raised in excessively clean environments lack the health protections that exposure to beneficial bacteria offer our immune systems. Unusually high rates of allergies and asthma can be another result of hyper-clean homes. (Luckily that\u2019s not a problem at MY house….)<\/p>\n

Wash With Safe, Simple Soaps<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alcohol-based hand sanitizer doesn\u2019t promote resistant bacteria, but it also doesn\u2019t kill a number of important baddies. In fact, it doesn\u2019t even remove dirt, and Triclosan, a key ingredient, is under FDA review as a suspected hormone disrupter. Instead, sanitation experts recommend a 20-second scrub with plain soap and hot water, lathering up for about the time it takes to sing \u201cTwinkle, twinkle, little star\u201d or recite the ABCs. Turns out that though dirty hands are still hazardous to human health, clean enough (NOT sterile) hands are just fine for most things (short of surgery, of course).<\/p>\n

For preference, use a simple castile soap such as Dr. Bronner\u2019s liquid baby soap, which scores a mere 1 on the Environmental Working Group\u2019s potential dangers scale. Rather than aiming to eradicate all bacteria, we might remember that our bodies hold many times more bacteria than human cells. Nearly all bacteria are harmless or beneficial, and wiping them out indiscriminately is a very bad idea. Indeed, bacteria are our very good friends; beneficial bacteria aid in food digestion, help our immune systems to develop appropriate responses, and reduce inflammatory processes.<\/p>\n

Safe, Simple Shampoo<\/strong><\/p>\n

My favorite homemade shampoo combines luxuriant lathering with gently cleansing. It won\u2019t get your hair \u201csqueaky clean\u201d because it doesn\u2019t strip away natural oils, but your hair will dry silky soft.<\/p>\n

1 cup organic castile liquid soap
\n1 tablespoon organic cider vinegar
\n1 tablespoon virgin olive oil
\n1\/3 cup water<\/p>\n

Combine ingredients in a spray bottle. Shake gently before use, then work a tablespoon of shampoo into wet hair while massaging scalp, then rinse thoroughly. Gently towel dry hair.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Preserving Health And Well Being, Naturally I recently saw yet another article protesting the need to raise food crops organically. Really? Really?? Anybody who doubts the validity of the organic food movement is not paying attention to the daily news. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[182],"tags":[865,863,866,864],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1lB7f-o1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.loghouseplants.com\/blogs\/greengardening\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1489"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.loghouseplants.com\/blogs\/greengardening\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.loghouseplants.com\/blogs\/greengardening\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.loghouseplants.com\/blogs\/greengardening\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.loghouseplants.com\/blogs\/greengardening\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1489"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.loghouseplants.com\/blogs\/greengardening\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1490,"href":"https:\/\/www.loghouseplants.com\/blogs\/greengardening\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1489\/revisions\/1490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.loghouseplants.com\/blogs\/greengardening\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.loghouseplants.com\/blogs\/greengardening\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.loghouseplants.com\/blogs\/greengardening\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}