I hope that this actually happens, rather than being tied up in the courts for another 3 or 4 decades.

Cattle cannot digest the feed that they are routinely given. They are supposed to eat grasses, not corn and grains. The antibiotics are given to the cattle BECAUSE of the fact they're being fed stuff they can't survive on. Yes, they put on a lot of weight much faster than if they were simply grassfed, but at what cost.

I hope they enforce it, for our heath and for the humane treatment of the cattle.

people with "anti-biotic resistant superbugs," most commonly MRSA. These are not socio-economically selective conditions. The treatment in America (of course) of these life destroying disesaes are.
By allowing people who cannot afford treatment, to go untreated, these infections spread rapidly. These bacterial infections (caused by our anti-biotic infused food supply) are very contagious. I would be very surprised if they were not already an epidemic. This disease is as contagious as the common cold but the necrotizing (flesh eating) capability makes this horrendous. Much worse than what was originally thought about the contagious ability of AIDS in the '80's. Our government must act quickly to stop the spread of these infections and the source. To allow the already infected people to go untreated and freely intermingle in our society is a recipe for disaster. Treat these people now and immediately stop the use of anti-biotics in our food supply or we will soon be over-run with this horrible, lethal and disfiguring disease. I think it is more prevalent in the south, based on research, due to the power of the sun (vitamin D) to increase the strength of this condition.
Maybe this is a part of "their" plan to reduce population, IDK. Ask any Southern Dr. about the prevalence of MRSA and other anti-biotic resistant "bugs" and they will tell you (especially those in the E.R.) that the problem is huge.

Congratulations!

Let's just start with MRSA doesn't come from animal feed. You can tell this because Methicillin isn't used in animal feed.

A study in the journal mBio, published by the American Society for Microbiology, shows how an antibiotic-susceptible staph germ passed from humans into pigs, where it became resistant to the antibiotics tetracycline and methicillin. And then the antibiotic-resistant staph learned to jump back into humans.

"It's like watching the birth of a superbug," says Lance Price of the Translational Genomics Research Institute, or TGen, in Flagstaff, Ariz.

Price and colleagues in 19 countries did whole-genome analysis on a staph strain called CC398 and 88 closely related variations. CC398 is a so-called MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, that emerged within the past decade in pigs and has since spread widely in cattle and poultry as well as pigs.

The genetic analysis allowed the study authors to trace the lineage of the livestock bug back to its antibiotic-susceptible human ancestors. Price says it shows beyond a doubt that the animal bacterium jumped back into humans with close exposure to livestock.

This "pig MRSA" has been detected in nearly half of all meat sampled in U.S. commerce, according to the American Society for Microbiology. Most staph found in meat can be eliminated by cooking food well, but it can still pose a risk to consumers if handled unsafely or if it cross-contaminates with other things in the kitchen.

read more: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/02/21/147190101/how-using-antibiotics-in-animal-feed-creates-superbugs

Which isn't surprising, because the study authors phrased it poorly. At one point, this bug was not resistant. It is now resistant. That can't be dated via a gene sequence.

Otherwise, you'd have to explain how methicillin resistance appeared in the absence of exposure to methicillin.

allow jeff his moment of superiority...

read my posts for entertainment.
Maybe, one day, I'll be as smart(assed) as you.

a change, but won't this increase the space needed, the labor, and the eventual price?

Again, this helps public health, but it's not without additional impact on families with low-income and small to medium sized producers.

And I didn't see any mention of stuff coming across the border. Our stores are full of that stuff. Will it be tested?

Most food in America, both meat and plant, are produced by four major corporations. An interesting read is The New Food Revolution by John Robbins.

Gene Bauer also wrote a book about Farm Sanctuary, his farm animal rescue, that gives a lot of information about how farming has changed from a family operation to a major corporate owned business.

There's plenty of scientific evidence that red meat is a leading cause of colon cancer. You can google it.

I don't think it would be a bad thing to limit the amount of red meat in a diet. I mostly eat chicken or fish. And I try to always get organic chicken. They put arsenic in chicken feed to make them grow faster. That arsenic doesn't just magically disappear when the animal is slaughtered.

I'm a meat eater but with GMOs and all the chemicals and antibiotics in meat I'm leaning more and more towards a vegetable based diet.

changes work out fine for people who aren't exactly tight on money, there are millions who don't have the knowledge or money to change.

And there are millions on food stamps for whom a piece of organic chicken takes up 2 - 3 days of their entire allotment
of money. So they get vegetables, and lose the protein. They can't afford the good vegetables, and you need a decent stove, refrigerator, and time (about half of the recipients of food programs work full or part-time, can't make enough to live without assistance), so many of them wind up with crappy food anyway. You can mostly replace the protein and other nutrients in red meat with other choices, but it takes some serious reading and understanding, and a budget that allows for it, and that ain't in the EBT cards.

I went to my favorite little farm market the other day, guy was regaling me with tales of what it used to be like, when this area was covered with orchards, farms. He pointed to the huge packing shed, the only one left out of 9 that used to line the nearby tracks, now used to store trucks and other materials.

Virtually ALL of those farms and orchards are gone, turned into housing, all the way up to and into the mountains. All the food is flown or trucked in from other places. If we start moving away from our existing crappy food system, it is going to take some major changes and realignment. There is no longer enough arable land with irrigation to grow the food this country eats, and we have lived through 2-3 generations that live on someone else's processed food, have NO idea how to cook their own, something that the person who works 10 hours at the box factory (or Walmart, or wherever) is often too exhausted to do when they get home.

Again, I agree that some changes should come about, but we can't even get a lousy food pyramid out the door and get people to follow it without lobbyists for the sugar and fat folks screaming their heads off. And ask Oprah what it's like to tell people they should eat less read meat - you can get sued for that. It would take a huge education effort and some government-sized investment to do that, and there are a lot of folks with a vested interest in seeing things keep on going the way they are. So possible, but it won't be easy.

Now, I have to soak my beans for tomorrow I

That would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

And why would cows not survive in the wild? I wonder which animals other than humans would eat a domestic cow that was wandering around in the fields.

Wow, it's only taken what 30 years? But perhaps it will be upheld and implemented.

And yes, the super low cost of food will go up, and so perhaps housing/medical costs can go down? Who knows, but keeping food prices low by producing it in ways that guarantee that our antibiotics will be unavailable for medical reasons is beyond preposterous.

I would also point out that nutrient poor food produced by the "conventional" model of cheap inputs and complete disregard for animal welfare is not healthy for anyone, rich, medium or poor.

and MRSA has reared its ugly head in response