I felt plain old horrible yesterday.  I had some major pain along my ribs that ached.  I suspected that it was caused by the crack I heard after being smashed by 185 lbs of children on a carnival ride.  I had to breathe shallow and hunch to avoid pain.  Even with some ibuprofen, I still felt awful.

I took myself and my 3 kids to the urgent care right after work.  Luckily my husband could pick them up since it would mean a long night.  I waited over two hours to get seen and have an x-ray.  Luckily, nothing was broken, but I did have mastitis, which contributed to my pain.  The doctor gave me pain meds and a course of antibiotics.

With each of my kids, I’ve tried to nurse them as long as possible.  My eldest nursed until she was 27 months old.  My second child took the cake and kept at it well past 3 years old.  I had to take a trip to get her to stop.  My son is still nursing at 20 months.  He’s my erratic nursing monster so I’ve had my share of mastitis with him.

Usually, I’m able to take care of it without medication, but this time, I could not.  It was unbelievably sore, to the point where I cried in pain when my chest was bumped by him trying to snuggle.  My poor son was so confused as to why I wouldn’t let him jump on me.

Thankfully, I managed to get in a dose of antibiotics that reduced my infection significantly this morning.  After suffering yesterday, I couldn’t imagine what would happen if I didn’t get medication.  Then it hit me how important antibiotics can be for animals too.

While many activists are demonizing the use of antibiotics and food companies are jumping on the bandwagon, I can’t help but think how cruel this antibiotic free label is for animals.  If someone denied me medicine, I’d be suffering.  If a sick animal was not given medicine, it would be suffering also just because a non-food producing activist doesn’t understand the process.

The more I see these non-profit advocacy groups trying to fear monger and dictate policy, I can see that these poorly vetted decisions indeed cause suffering.  These food fads aren’t making agriculture any better.  It actually promotes the very thing that we want to avoid in many cases.

After feeling so sick last night, I’m going to avoid any food company who touts anti-scientific food fads. Those behind those bad decisions aren’t helping anyone but marketing to ignorance and fear.  The ignorance and fear industry can only criticize but haven’t shown us a better way of doing things.  If they can’t come up with an actual better practice, they are only talk.  Those talkers need to do some science and prove that their way is better.