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Eating In, a series examining food and food culture in New Hampshire, ran May 17-21, 2010.

Superbug: Meat and Antibiotic Resistance

Dirty Bunny via Flickr/CreativeCommons

Here's something you would not want to have for dinner: Methacillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus, or MRSA.

Yesterday a report released online by the Journal Pediatrics found a 10-fold increase in MRSA diagnoses among children over 10 years and a three-fold increase in the use of one drug, which indicates that the epidemic that particulary threatens children is becoming much more serious.

MRSA kills more people each year than aids. That is disconcerting news, but what does it have to do with dinner?

Maryn McKenna is a science and medical writer and author of Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA. Her book follows the pathogen’s quick evolution from the ocassional nursing home or hospital to the community, and now spreading to farm animals and into the food chain. And Maryn McKenna joined to tell us more about what she calls the leading edge of a global crisis of antibiotic resistance.

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