Donald Ross, a poultry worker in Virginia, nicked his finger one day on the job. The subsequent infection ballooned into a lesion so unresponsive to antibiotics that it had to be surgically removed, according to a report in the Baltimore Sun. Poultry workers spend their days feeding birds, transporting and weighing them, and then hanging them on hooks, slaughtering, and packing them. Often they do not wear gloves or protective clothing while they do this messy work, and bird feathers and bits of fecal matter can piggyback on their clothes and shoes. Chances are they bring home dangerous bacteria, the kinds that are resistant to antibiotic treatment.
An estimated 70 percent of all antibiotics sold in the United States—more than 24 million pounds every year—are used on farms, mostly in animal feed. Health researchers have long worried that this heavy load of antibiotics is causing strains of bacteria to evolve ...
