Letters: Antibiotics, one-child policy
TEXT OF STORY
Bill Radke: We apparently grossed out one of our listeners. We told you last week the Food and Drug Administration wants farmers to lay off feeding cows, pigs and chickens antibiotics. Turns out too much antibiotics — like too much of anything — is bad for animals, human and otherwise.
As I say, this farming practice totally grossed out listener Tracie Ewing of Indianapolis, Ind.
Tracie Ewing: They feed the cows and pigs antibiotics so that they eat more and produce more meat at slaughter? I guess that’s why farmers can claim they’re not using growth hormones. They’re using something more inherently dangerous and in the process, have changed very nasty bacteria into antibiotic resistant superbugs. Kudos! Dr. Frankenstein would be proud.
Gene Wilder as Dr. Frankenstein in “Young Frankenstein”: It’s alive! It’s alive! It’s alive!!!!
You were also lively when it comes to our series from China. Marketplace reporter Scott Tong looked at China’s economy, 30 years after the one-child policy. Listener Min Potthoff of Atlanta, Ga. left China in 1998. She’s been following the changes in her homeland from afar.
Min Potthoff: Being an only child born in the 70s in Shanghai, I can relate to some interviewees perspectives. And I witnessed, but not realized until much later, many drastic social changes with the implementation of such a policy.
Listener Allen Doyle from Davis, Calif. wanted to hear more about the original motivation for the one child policy — fewer people.
Allen Doyle: I was disappointed that the growth of population was dropped from the conversation. It’s fantasy to think that we can grow indefinitely. We haven’t disproven the limits to resources.
You can listen to all of Scott Tong’s stories on the one child policy, see a full timeline and a great slideshow at that link.
Our final listener letter is about the limits of optimism. We told you that a measure of consumer confidence plunged in June. Susan Toews of Janesville, Calif., says, yeah, no kidding.
Susan Toews: Every time we saw the live footage of oil gushing, animals dying, people unemployed, oil executives try to explain the unexplainable — well, we didn’t just feel like throwing a party or whooping it up.
Here’s hoping July gives us something to whoop about.
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