On a cold windy morning, Kelly Nissen feeds the cows at the Iowa State University Beef Nutrition Farm. He weighs out specific rations and carefully delivers them to numbered feed bunks. "When you're feeding, you're always double-checking yourself to make sure it's going in the right lot," Nissen says. It's important — because these cows munch on more than just the common mix of hay, corn and distiller's grain. They're also charged with testing out different formulas developed by the researchers in the animal science department at Iowa State. Among the goals here is to find ways farmers can reduce how often they put antibiotics in animal feed — which they use not just to treat sick animals, but also to prevent disease and get animals to grow faster. The issue is that some of the antibiotics used on farms are the same ones that doctors prescribe to humans fighting off infections. The more these antibiotics are used, the more likely it is that some squirrelly bacteria will develop
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