Once years ago, I was out in my side yard talking to the neighbor and this big swarm of gnats came by and we were shoeing them off and shortly after I went inside. A few minutes later I started feeling nauseous and my mouth was kind of numb. I looked in a mirror to see if I could figure out why, and my face was covered with red blotches; I thought maybe one of the bugs stung me and I was allergic to it. First I took a couple Benadryl that I had for seasonal allergies, then I called a nurse with my insurance company as my throat was tightening. The nurse looked in my record and said I was having an anaphylactic reaction to Cipro, an antibiotic they prescribed for me which I had taken shortly before going outside, and to hang up and call 9-1-1 before I went into shock.
Right after I hung up with her, someone rang the doorbell so of course I answered it, and it was this guy I was dating at the time. After I let him in and told him what was happening, I was starting to feel better from the Benadryl and decided to just lie on the couch and wait it out. It’s funny because each time I saw this guy I had another dumb accident – four in a row. In retrospect it was a sign, but luckily he broke up with me anyway. He basically said I wasn’t smart enough for him because I didn’t know the Civil War battlefields. Obviously that wasn’t the real reason (because I can list thousands of them off the top of my head). Call me a Yankee but as far as I’m concerned the Civil War ended about 150 years ago.
Later I read that researchers (New England Journal of Medicine, 2002) found that people who developed Cipro-resistant bacteria had acquired them by eating pork that was contaminated with salmonella. The report concluded that salmonella resistant to the antibiotic flouroquine (Cipro) can be spread from swine to humans, and, therefore, the use of flouroquinolones (among the most powerful antibiotics available) in livestock should be prohibited. At the time, Baytril the sister drug to Cipro, was even added to flocks of chickens’ drinking water if any of them were suspected of having E. coli infection.[1] You can’t find which chickens in a swarm of 10,000 are sick so they all get treated. The chemical steps that cause drug allergies occur after being exposed to the drug and your body producing antibodies against it.
Fluoroquinolones were banned from use in livestock in 2005 but researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Arizona State University found evidence in 2012 suggesting they were still in use. They were trying to figure out why fluoroquinolone resistance has not dropped and why high rates of fluoroquinolone-resistant Campylobacter continue to be found on commercial poultry meat products. They examined feather meal which is processed from parts of the 9 billion chickens per year that are inedible yet added as a supplement to poultry, pig, cow, and fish feeds, or sold as an “organic” fertilizer. Besides up to ten antibiotic residues found in all of the samples tested, seven other personal care products, including acetaminophen (the active ingredient in Tylenol), diphenhydramine (the active ingredient in Benadryl), and the antidepressant fluoxetine (the active ingredient in Prozac), were detected.[2]
As far as the Cipro, my sister-in-law is a pharmacist and she told me to remember to always list quinolones as an allergy so I’m never prescribed the antibiotic again. Aren’t you curious what drugs and bacteria you’ve eaten through your factory meat over the years and how it has affected your body? That’s why one of the Slow Food organization’s mottoes is, “Shake the hand that feeds you.” Besides, it’s fun, interesting, and helps us celebrate real food.
[1] “Modern Meat – Antibiotic Debate Overview,” Is Your Meat Safe, Frontline, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/meat/safe/overview.html
[2] “Banned antibiotics found in poultry products,” Science Daily, April 5, 2012.
