Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader saw a particularly long, and particularly interesting, article on the AP news wire a moment ago. The piece is: Pressure rises to stop antibiotics in agriculture.

Your Maximum Leader happens to agree with the thrust of the piece, which is that drugs fed to pigs, chickens and cows are leading to super-bacteria that do not respond to antibiotic drugs. These super-bacteria can, and do, move to humans and pose a tremendous threat to human health. What surprised your Maximum Leader about the AP piece is that they attempted to show the other side of the argument, namely that antibiotics keep healthier herds promote quick growth and reduced feed costs.

Now the peice doesn’t attempt a full-blow economic analysis of the costs of giving antibiotics to herd animals on farms vs not giving them antibiotics; but your Maximum Leader wouldn’t expect that type of analysis from the AP. He hopes that some Ag school somewhere in the US is working with the economics department to do such an analysis…

Yet another reason that your Maximum Leader relies on the Smallholder for the great majority of his beef and pork… Smallholder doesn’t dope his animals.

Carry on.