If you live in New Zealand and you feel like chicken tonight, perhaps you should settle for The Other White Meat. That's because 17-year-old Kiwi Jane Millar, while working toward her IB Programme Diploma, conducted a science experiment that showed that several local supermarket chickens contained anti-biotic resistant bugs. (Fordham recently gave the IB biology course an "A," by the way.) When the young scientist treated the poultry-produced bacteria with several antibiotics, including some used in humans and not in chickens, a few strains refused to keel over like good prokaryotes should. "The main finding is that we can create resistance to medically important antibiotics by using antibiotics that are presumably safe in agriculture," Millar said. Whatever. The main finding is to go vegetarian, but stay away from the bagged spinach. And that Fordham's reports are clearly spot-on in all their assessments, always.
"Student exposes bugs in chicken," The Press, December 1, 2007