Backing into a bacterial storm
It seem plants were trusted enough when it came to developing high-yield varieties of rice and wheat, part of what became known as the Green Revolution of the 1960s. I am not so sure about meat factory farming.
I pick up a newspaper and what do I see – a report that up to 38,000 lives are lost annually in Thailand from the consumption of meat contaminated with antimicrobial bacteria that leads to drug resistance in humans. This came from experts here in the commercial livestock industry.
Reports by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations estimate that five million deaths in Asia could be credited to antimicrobial resistance by 2050 if measures are not carried out to decrease their use.
Far from my position being unwinnable, I see an increasingly health-conscious population turning to organically produced food and adopting a vegetarian diet. Forty years ago in Bangkok there was only one restaurant (apart from some Indian restaurants) that had a vegetarian menu. Today there are over a hundred exclusively vegetarian eateries. The same is true of other cities of the world.
For those who want to eat traditional diets, well, that is your funeral.
Ian Martin
Bangkok
