Farmers may have played their part in the obesity epidemic by
fattening their livestock with antibiotics, a study suggests. By
altering the fine balance of gut bacteria which influence our
metabolism, even small amounts of the drugs entering the food
chain could have caused obesity rates to rise, researchers
claim. Although the use of antibiotics on farms is now banned in
the EU due to the risk of germs becoming drug-resistant, it was
commonplace in the 1950s and is still permitted in the US. Prof
Martin Blaser of New York University, who led the study, said:
"The rise of obesity around the world is coincident with
widespread antibiotic use, and our studies provide an
experimental linkage. "It is possible that early exposure to
antibiotics primes children for obesity later in life." For
decades farmers in Britain and around the world fed low doses of
antibiotics to cattle, sheep, pigs and chickens because the drug
caused the animals to gain weight. In the new study, researchers
studied the effects of penicill