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German doctors sound the alarm: antibiotic-resistant microbes found in chicken meat
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
The Ministry of Consumer Protection is preparing a law restricting the use of antibiotics in animal husbandry.
What is worse: the antibiotics we swallow with meat, or the antibiotic-resistant microbes contained in the same meat? Many Germans have become concerned about this issue and have decided that both are bad. The result is obvious: Germans are buying less chicken, writes test.org.ua. The fact is that the German environmental organization BUND recently published alarming research results. Microbes resistant to antibiotics were found in every second sample of chicken from supermarkets. The Ministry of Agriculture and Consumer Protection is going to restrict the use of antibiotics in animal husbandry by law.
The problem is industrial animal farming
Where is it, the rural idyll? On average, a chicken lives 32 days, a pig - 4 months. Then they turn into chicken and pork. Industrial complexes for more than 100,000 chickens or thousands of pigs are not uncommon. The EU instructions allow for a density of 39 kilograms per square meter when fattening chickens. If we assume that the marketable weight of a chicken is about two kilograms, we get 20 birds per square meter.
Chickens in an industrial complex
Industrial poultry farming. In such conditions, animals cannot survive without medication. Their use is limited by a special law. Antibiotics can only be used in case of illness as prescribed by a veterinarian. But in such crowded conditions, the disease spreads immediately. And how can you prescribe individual therapy for one of hundreds of thousands of birds? So it turns out that chickens are treated with antibiotics on average 2.3 times in their short lives, pigs - 5.3 times.
There is no direct threat to health, but my appetite has disappeared.
Antibiotic-resistant microbes are everywhere in our environment. And this is due to the excessive use of drugs not only in animal husbandry but also in medicine, points out Sabina Klein, an employee of the Consumer Protection Center of the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia. Therefore, a direct link between antibiotic-resistant microbes in chicken meat and the use of antibiotics in poultry farming has not been proven.
How to protect yourself from harmful microbes?
Armin Valet, an employee of the Consumer Protection Center in Hamburg, gives simple advice: observe hygiene rules when preparing food. Wash your hands. Do not cut vegetables for a salad with the same knife you just used to cut up a chicken. Cook meat for at least ten minutes at a temperature of at least 70 degrees - this will destroy all germs.
In Germany, chicken meat is the cheapest. But you can also buy chicken or pork in an organic food store. They guarantee that the animals were fattened without antibiotics. In addition, they were kept in more favorable conditions, and the fattening lasts longer. Accordingly, such chicken costs not 4 euros or even less, but 20 euros or even more. And not everyone can afford it.
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