LSD in Walmart steak; antibiotics in farm animals and obesity: food safety roundup

A writer questions whether antibiotics fed to farm animals to fatten them up are doing the same thing to humans. (The Associated Press)

A woman in Florida who was nine months pregnant gave birth under induced labor and the influence of LSD after eating a steak from Walmart.

The Associated Press reports that the woman and her family experienced hallucinations, dizziness and shortness of breath after eating the round steak purchased at a Walmart store. When they went to the hospital, doctors induced labor.

Police took samples from the home, including the food the family had been eating, for testing. The county's medical examiner said the steak had traces of lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD.

The family was released from the hospital under good condition. There has been no word on how the drug got into the meat. Apparently, no other cases were reported.

In other news, antibiotic use in farm animals is a hot topic these days, with scientists warning about the development of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria that make treatment of infections difficult in humans.

Well here's another angle: What if those same antibiotics that are used to fatten animals on the farm are having the same effect on people who eat antibiotic-laced meat?

An opinion piece in the New York Times, says that new evidence shows that America’s obesity epidemic may be connected to our high consumption of these drugs.

In the late 40s and 50s, when antibiotics were being developed, a number of scientists believed that antibiotics could stimulate growth in children. That was seen as a good thing at the time.

But today, too much flesh is not celebrated. A scientists studying the effect of antibiotics found that female mice fed the drugs packed on fat twice as fast as a control group fed the same diet.

That's it for now. Keep your appetite and eat safely.

-- Lynne Terry