It was only a matter of time

According to a recent edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, pigs raised in factory farms in Taiwan are harboring a dangerous type of salmonella that has become resistant to one of our newest and most potent antibiotics—fluoroquinolone, a drug that is critical to human medicine. When people become infected with this resistant strain, doctors will have few drugs in their arsenal to combat it.

The reason that the salmonella became resistant to fluoroquinolone is that the pigs were dosed with the drug on a regular basis. The bacteria that were vulnerable to fluoroquinolone died off, allowing the few that were naturally resistant to flourish.

According to a study in Preventive Veterinary Medicine, Pigs raised on pasture are healthier than ones kept in confinement and rarely require drugs of any kind.

The New England Journal of Medicine 2002; 346:413-419. Preventive Veterinary Medicine. 1983. Vol. 1. p. 357-369.