U.S. Uses 40 Tons of Antibiotics a Day Just to Grow Food
The United States consumes more than 50 tons of antibiotics a day—80% of which is not used for humans.
Rather, about 40 tons goes to promote agricultural production, such as giving antibiotics to cattle and chickens.
This practice has dire ramifications for human health, two experts warn, as the abundance of antibiotics in the food chain has resulted in drug-resistant bacteria that can leave people vulnerable to infections and other illnesses.
“Antimicrobial resistance is a critical threat to public health,” Aidan Hollis and Ziana Ahmed wrote in The New England Journal of Medicine. “The value of antibiotics for human health is immeasurable.”
Hollis, an economics professor at the University of Calgary, and Ahmed, an economist at the University of Toronto, estimated the U.S. goes through 51 tons of antibiotics a day. They estimate that each year The U.S. uses 13,540,000 kilograms (kg) for livestock, 3,290,000 kg for humans, 150,000 for aquaculture, 150,000 kg for pets and 70,000 kg for crops.
Hollis and Ahmed say there is “a great deal of concern” that the overuse of antibiotics is “contributing to the development and spread of resistant organisms. Agricultural industry groups, in line with their short-term financial interests, argue that there is no conclusive proof that the antibiotics used in agriculture harm human health. Unfortunately, evidence is mounting that resistant pathogens are emerging and being selected for at least partly because of nonhuman uses of antibiotics”
http://www.allgov.com/news/top-stories/us-uses-40-tons-of-antibiotics-a-day-just-to-grow-food-131229?news=852027
= new reply since forum marked as read
...wheat-like is a good solution. 
