(from the introduction) Antibiotic use in the rearing of livestock is a practice that is decades old, starting after World War Two. It vastly improved the lifespan and health of the animals, which in turn greatly benefitted farmers who raised and sold them. It also allowed farmers opportunities to raise more animals than before with greater efficiency. However, in the 1990s, this practice started to be exploited as natural additives and yearly antibiotics were replaced with growth hormones and antibiotic use at the subtherapeutic level to promote unprecedented – and unnatural – growth (Jackson 2016). This use of antibiotics also comes with a much more serious consequence – the rise of antibiotic resistance in bacteria, which can leave animals, and eventually humans, susceptible to infections and diseases that could otherwise have been prevented with proper antibiotic usage (Sancheza et al. 2016)
