Let livestock roam

Your article “Drug-Free Food” (July 14) suggests that a ban on all antibiotics in animals would place livestock in danger from diseases.

However, what truly puts livestock in danger from disease in large industrial farms -- where antibiotics are routinely used -- is the fact that hundreds and thousands of animals are cramped together, using as little space as possible, with little or no access to sunlight, fresh air or natural movement. It is in these conditions, where animals eat and sleep in their own waste, living in a virtual breeding ground for disease, that antibiotics must be used to prevent inevitable outbreaks of illness.

If farm animals were raised under more natural conditions, there would be no need for antibiotics to “prevent” epidemics, and the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics could easily be dropped altogether.

Christina Salvi

GRACE Factory Farm Project, New York