Environmental Effects Of Antibiotics On The Environment Essay

By collaborating our work from various resources, we established that antibiotics have harmful side effects on the environment. When animals are administered antibiotics, it kills off other bacteria and allows antibiotic resistant bacteria to survive and multiply. This causes contamination of animal waste, which then comes into contact with water, soil, or air (Food, Farm, Animals, and Drugs 2014). Horizontal gene transfer is also a big concern for the environment. In recent years, there has been an increase in antibiotic resistant bacteria found. The antibiotics that are given to the animals get in contact with their immediate environment, but then get washed away and become in contact with various water sources such as, wastewater plants (Finley, Laarsson, Mcewen, Li, and Gaze 2013). When the …show more content…
For this reason, I would advise The Baroness to not implement The Kenmore Project, because while it could potentially stop cows from generating methane, which could then stop global warming, there are many negative impacts that antibiotics have on the environment that outweigh this. A study conducted by the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, wanted to see the amount of antibiotic uptake by crops and their effects on the environment. They examined 5 antibiotics, and what they found was that cow’s animal waste that has antibiotics is used to create organic manure. Crops in the environment are able to uptake these antibiotics through contact of the manure, which then creates antibiotic resistance in crops. (Kang, Gupta, Fritz, Singh, Chandler, Murray, and Rohwer 2013). Antibiotics affect the environment in many ways. They come in contact with soil, water, and air, and they also effect crops and microbial population. More research needs to be conducted on antibiotic resistant genes to see if there is a way to inhibit them and how they will directly impact the