How Organic Farming Can Help Fight Supergerms

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The Organic Center has authored an article in the Modern Wellness Guide about how organic can act as a tool to fight superbugs. In it, we discuss how choosing organic goes beyond protecting consumers from pesticide residues; organic also reduces the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.  These diseases have been on the rise lately, and have reached a point where the World Health Organization declared antibiotic-resistant bacteria to be a global health epidemic. One of the reasons for the prevalence of superbugs is the use of widespread use of antibiotics in conventional agriculture as a prophylactic and growth-promoting agent. Organic, on the other hand, raises livestock without the use of antibiotics. This means that organic farming doesn’t select for microbial resistance, and can even protect consumers from coming into contact with antibiotic-resistant bacteria. To examine this issue in depth, The Organic Center developed and published a report showing how organic can be used as a model to produce healthful food while preventing the spread of antibiotic resistance. The report shows that organic not only slows the spread of antibiotic resistance, it also protect the health of consumers by reducing their risk of exposure to these diseases.