Whats the "Beef" with Beef? (or chicken for that matter)

So now that we know the story of pesticides on our produce what is the story about our beef and chicken. Well first of all in regards to poultry, there is a misconception that hormones are used to grow the chickens faster. While there are things used to grow the chickens bigger and faster, it isn't hormones. The use of hormones in U.S. poultry production has been illegal since 1952. However, hormones are used and found in over 75% of our cattle. That being said there is another problem that is found in both beef and chicken.. Antibiotics!
Nearly half the volume of antibiotics produced in the US each year - about 15,000,000 pounds, worth almost $250,000,000 - is fed to animals. Penicillin, tetracycline, and other such medications are routinely mixed into the feed of a majority of livestock in this country... not mainly to stave off disease but, instead, in efforts to increase growth rates.
In 1949, Dr. Thomas Jukes - who then worked for Lederle Laboratories, the company that discovered chlortetracycline (aureomycin) found that feeding the wastes from the production of chlortetracylcline to baby chickens increased their growth rate 10% to 20%. Continued research showed that the effect was at least as pronounced on piglets and calves. Companies claim that giving doses of antibiotic well below those that would be used to treat disease (a procedure called subtherapeutic administration) can return $3.00 in improved feed-conversion efficiency for every dollar invested. Dr. Jukes discovery did much to make a whole new sort of farming possible. Antibiotics have made it more practical to confine animals, where they can be fed controlled doses of commercial feeds, rather than allowing them to range. This permits animals to be kept in very crowded conditions without serious outbreaks of disease. According to an Office of Technology Assesment report in 1979, 99% of all poultry, 70% of all beef cattle and veal, and 90% of swine recieve routine subtherpaeutic doses of antibiotics. It's now nearly impossible to find livestock that don't have significant population of resistant bacteria, whether or not they have actually been fed antibiotics. The resistant strains quickly pass from one animal to another in confinement and have even been reported to mysteriously travel several hundred yards between pens.
North American countries stand practically alone among developed nations in allowing indiscriminate use of antibiotics in animals. Czechoslovakia, Denmark, England, the Netherland, Norway, Sweden, and the West Germany all require veterinary prescriptions for animal antibiotics. In the U.S., however, the director of FDA's center for Veterinary Medicine, Lester H. Crawford, has been unsucessfully pursuing a ban on subtherapuetic use of antibiotics since 1977!
As of today 25% of samonella strains in humans are resistant to antibiotics. The over prescribing of antibiotics by doctors to their patients has definitely contributed to these virulent and resistant strains of bacteria. However, I firmly believe that the massive over-use of antibiotics in animal feed is one of the greatest threats to us today!