Can anybody outline what possible justification there is for the continued use of antibiotics not as disease cure, but as prophylaxis and growth promoters in intensive farming? I heard about the stupidity of this as a child, from competent medical professionals, and decades on, nothing has changed. Rather than such socially rapacious short-sighted practices, we ought to be legislating better farming practices and tighter controls on these precious medicines.

I believe this is quite likely a worse issue than the other problem: the blatant overprescription of antibiotics by weak and obsequious family doctors looking to defend themselves from lawsuits and approbation from wealthy and stupid patients with colds and coughs, which has also accelerated resistance.