Pyrrhic progress : the history of antibiotics in Anglo-American food production / Claas Kirchhelle.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kirchhelle, Claas, 1987- author.

Series:

Critical issues in health and medicine.

Critical issues in health and medicine

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Antibiotics in agriculture--United States--History.

Antibiotics in agriculture.

Antibiotics in agriculture--Great Britain--History.

Drug resistance in microorganisms.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (451)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, [2020]

Language Note:

English.

Summary:

Pyrrhic Progress analyses over half a century of antibiotic use, regulation, and resistance in US and British food production. Mass-introduced after 1945, antibiotics helped revolutionize post-war agriculture. Food producers used antibiotics to prevent and treat disease, protect plants, preserve food, and promote animals' growth. Many soon became dependent on routine antibiotic use to sustain and increase production. The resulting growth of antibiotic infrastructures came at a price. Critics blamed antibiotics for leaving dangerous residues in food, enabling bad animal welfare, and selecting for antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in bacteria, which could no longer be treated with antibiotics. Pyrrhic Progress reconstructs the complicated negotiations that accompanied this process of risk prioritization between consumers, farmers, and regulators on both sides of the Atlantic. Unsurprisingly, solutions differed: while Europeans implemented precautionary antibiotic restrictions to curb AMR, consumer concerns and cost-benefit assessments made US regulators focus on curbing drug residues in food. The result was a growing divergence of antibiotic stewardship and a rise of AMR. Kirchhelle's comprehensive analysis of evolving non-human antibiotic use and the historical complexities of antibiotic stewardship provides important insights for current debates on the global burden of AMR.

Contents:

The sound of coughing pigs

Picking one's poisons : antibiotics and the public

Chemical cornucopia : antibiotics on the farm

Toxic priorities : antibiotics and the FDA

A fusion of concerns : antibiotics and the British public

Bigger, better, faster : antibiotics and British farming

Typing resistance : antibiotic regulation in Britain

The public : antibiotics, failed bans, and growing fears

The agricultural community : hostility in sinking numbers

The government : failing to regulate

Yearning for purity

British farming and the environmental turn

Swann song : British antibiotic policy after 1969.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

This eBook is made available Open Access. Unless otherwise specified in the content, the work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0

Description based on print version record.

Description based on print record.

ISBN:

9780813591506

0813591503

9780813591513

0813591511

OCLC:

1143814622