Staggering Statistic: Is Your Ham Sandwich on Drugs?

The next time you bite into a burger, consider this: You’re probably also chewing on prescription drugs. The animal pharmaceutical industry is booming—and all those antibiotics are working their way into our bodies.

In 2011 alone, 29.9 million pounds of antibiotics were sold in the U.S. for use on livestock. By comparison, only 7.7 million pounds of antibiotics were used to treat humans in the U.S. in that year.

And when cows, pigs, or chickens get medicated with antibiotics they don’t need, any bacteria they may be carrying start to become resistant to these drugs—creating “super bugs.” What’s even scarier, though, is these bacteria can easily spread to humans, through the meat of the livestock and even through the air.