Meat - it messes with water, part 2

One of things that I did not write about in my previous post is the impact of antibiotics on water systems and on water supply.

As HFW points out, livestock raised in intensive farms are often fed growth-enhancing antibiotics, which also serve another purpose: they combat the infections that befall livestock living in the cramped, insalubrious conditions of factory farms.

You might think that this is all well, except that antibiotics are deadly, in that they kill bacteria - good and bad. When livestock is pumped full of medicine, some of it passes out through body waste and finds itself in the environment, where it can have unpredictable effects on aquatic ecosystems and water quality. The same goes for the hormones routinely given to cattle in the US to boost milk production - hormones which are banned in most other industrialized countries.

Lastly, and while I am neither a biologist nor a doctor, I'll bet that the overconsumption of antibiotics by livestock could have the same impact as in humans and could lead to new and dangerous super-bugs.
All this to say that the impacts of intensive farming on water quality and aquatic ecosystems are complex and most likely significant. Further argument for staying away from factory meat.