Probiotics protect pigs from E. coli infections

Friday, December 13, 2013 by: PF Louis
Tags: probiotics, bacterial infections, pig farming

(NaturalNews) The ramifications of a recent German study on piglets may lead to healthier livestock with less pharmaceutical antibiotic use if other farmers get involved and see the results.

The study determined that pathogenic E. coli strains and their disease-causing genes were greatly lessened with probiotic E. faecium. The recent study also determined that there are E. coli strains that are beneficial, and those strains were not disturbed by E. faecium, even as it destroyed pathogenic E. coli.

It's estimated that the 70 to 80 percent of existing pharmaceutical antibiotics go into farm animal feed, often to fatten up livestock and increase their meat market value in addition to protecting against infectious diseases from overcrowded factory farmfeeding conditions.

This is a major factor in the development of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, such as the deadly MRSA bacteria. It would be interesting if pharmaceutical antibiotics faded into the medical background. They can and often do more harm, especially with their current frequent and indiscriminate use.

Pharmaceutical antibiotics destroy probiotic bacteria, leading to the debilitation of the entire immune system permanently if the intestinal flora is not replenished by intense probiotic dosing with supplements or fermented foods and beverages.

Because of their chemical nature, pharmaceutical antibiotics often create mild to serious neurological problems, as several fluoroquinolone antibiotic users will painfully attest (http://www.naturalnews.com).

In short, pharmaceutical antibiotics are the chemo of bacteria, the napalm or agent orange of infectious disease that leave so much collateral damage that one wonders how they have been called one of modern medicine's miracles, along with vaccines, another Big Pharma solution that creates many more problems.

Before pharmaceutical antibiotics, there were natural, less harmful antibiotics that were effective, ranging from colloidal silver to garlic and several herbal essential oils (http://www.naturalnews.com).

Is this the beginning of a new trend toward healthier farming?

So what does this have to do with farm animals? Well, those who eat meats from animals that aren't organic, free range or grass-fed are taking in some of the antibiotics fed to those animals. It's somewhat like carcinogenic second-hand (cigarette) smoke, but it's second-hand antibiotics. And as antibiotic-resistant strains increase, the animals have to be given more.

This actually encourages factory farming with terrible disease-fostering, crowded conditions and unnatural feed. In other words, sick livestock to create inferior food while endangering workers and nearby areas with infectious diseases.

Remember the swine flu? It was supposedly from an American-owned factory pig farm in Central Mexico which had spread so much filth and disease that the locals had begun protesting. Yes, swine flu reports were greatly exaggerated to promote vaccines. But it's on record that the American factory pig farm was a pathogenic-producing mess that endangered locals and workers.

The good news is that the EU has banned antibiotics for fattening up livestock since 2006. So European farmers were forced into other options such as prebiotics, probiotics and even zinc to absorb livestock gut pathogenic bacteria.

Feed companies quickly adapted, producing natural antibiotic feed products that tested better against their pharmaceutical counterparts without side effects.

Dutch animal feeds with diluted oregano oil were among the products tested. Oregano oil is a strong natural antimicrobial, antifungal and antiparasitic. A pair of Pennsylvanian farmers heard about it and decided to try it. One was a chicken farmer and the other a pig farmer.

Both farmers reported that the feed effectively minimized pathogenic bacterial infections, and their livestock animals seemed healthier and more energetic with the oregano oil feed than they did with pharmaceutical antibiotics.

They were also not dehydrated, as they had tended to be from pharmaceutical antibiotics. Hopefully, this will catch on in America and eliminate some of the unhealthy cycle of antibiotic overuse.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.sciencenews.org

http://aem.asm.org

http://www.naturalnews.com

http://science.naturalnews.com