True or False: Manure

(CNN) -- True or False: Antibiotics are needed in animal agriculture to keep waste to a minimum

The answer is FALSE

According to Chicago-based campaign group, Keep Antibiotics Working, the claim made by some in the pharmaceutical and agricultural industries that if antibiotics were reduced in animal agriculture, farm animals would need to be fed more and would therefore expel more waste is a false argument in the first place it says.

It says: "This perspective ignores the fact that the problem with livestock manure is not the total amount of manure produced but its concentration and handling. Manure itself is a valuable resource as fertilizer. Only when it is restricted to relatively small areas does manure become a waste problem and potential environmental contaminant.

"The huge amount of manure coming from industrial animal factories has become an enormous environmental issue. Resistant bacteria, seeping from the manure lagoons into underlying groundwater supplies and running off into surface water, are potentially placing drinking water at risk. But the solutions to the manure problem are dispersal of animal production facilities and better treatment methods-not continued dependence on antibiotics."

(Source: KeepAntibioticsWorking.com) E-mail to a friend