So, it seems to me that, in the post-COVID world, the egg industry apologetics have changed their rhetorics. Before COVID, they were saying "
There is no good evidence that around 70% of antibiotics goes to the egg industry." (I don't know what evidence they were asking for.) or were implying that a pandemic of superbacteria can be easily contained (Yeah, we've all seen how that works with COVID.). Nowadays, it seems to me they are mostly saying stuff like this:
Yes, around 70% of antibiotics is being used in the egg industry... but around half of those antibiotics are antibiotics that haven't been approved for the use in humans, so they are irrelevant to superbacteria in humans. And the rest are mostly not antibiotics which would typically be used to treat the corresponding infection in humans, so they are hardly causing superbacteria.
What is the best response to that rhetoric? It seems to me that a good response is to say:
Look, there are two hidden premises in that rhetoric:
1. Having small amounts of antibiotics which haven't been proven to be safe to humans in eggs is harmless.
2. Resistance to one type of antibiotic doesn't trigger resistance to other antibiotics.
And it's not at all obvious to me that either of those premises are even vaguely correct. How do you know that small amounts of those bird antibiotics in eggs are harmless to humans? And how do you know that resistance to one antibiotic doesn't trigger resistance to other antibiotics? There are germs which are resistant to all antibiotics: they are called eukaryotes.
What do you think about that response?