Cancelled until Fall
Antibiotic Resistance: We are what we eat
Agriculture uses twice as much antibiotics in its production, which we use to treat people in Denmark. We know that increased consumption of antibiotics creates more resistance and we know that resistance can be transmitted between bacteria.
Can agricultural resistant bacteria make us humans sick and can their resistance be transferred to bacteria that can make us sick? Is it necessary to risk our most important medicine in order to maintain intensive livestock farming? Is it possible to preserve a food production without spreading resistant bacteria?
Frank Møller Aarestrup is a professor at the Food Institute at Danish Technical University (DTU), and has for many years worked on monitoring and spreading of resistant bacteria, both in Denmark and the rest of the world. He has focused on the health consequences for people of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in animals and food.
He heads the Center for Genetic Epidemiology, which oversees the spread of resistant bacteria in all parts of the world, and where researchers from around the world get help characterizing their bacteria.