India’s love for butter chicken is killing its people, or at the very least, causing health problems. Here’s why.
Every year, more and more Indians are eating meat, mostly chicken. Since demand for chicken is sky-rocketing, poultry farmers are boosting the birds with antibiotics. All this medication has led to the growth of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the chickens.
This is in turn transmitted to humans who end up with severely compromised immune systems.
Startling statistics
According to a study by the Centre of Science and Environment (CSE), one of every two chickens in India has strong antibiotics coursing through its bloodstream.
Over the next 15 years, the PNAS paper predicts, India’s antibiotics consumption will double. Across Asia, already high antibiotic use will rise 4% in pigs and 143% in chicken. This, as IndiaSpend reports, is because of India’s unprecedented appetite for chicken.
Human antibiotics in chicken
The CSE study has also found that antibiotics that are used to treat diseases in humans, like ciprofloxacin, are being used rampantly by the poultry industry.
According to CSE Director Sunita Narain as quoted in DNA, there are as many as six antibiotics to be found in the muscles, liver and kidneys of chickens.
Three tissues — muscle, liver and kidney — were tested for the presence of six antibiotics widely used in poultry: oxytetracycline, chlortetracycline and doxycycline (class tetracyclines); enrofloxacin and ciprofloxacin (class fluoroquinolones) and neomycin, an aminoglycoside.
– Sunita Narain
Experts claim that since chicken is the largest meat consumed in India, it is imperative for organisations like the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) to take stronger steps to save India from a health crisis brought on by antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
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