Growing corn is a leading cause of soil erosion as well as water depletion and pollution. Corn ethanol plants further stress our water supplies by consuming 4 gallons of water for every gallon of fuel produced.
Now to the list of ethanol’s environmental insults we can add pharmaceutical pollution.
The discovery of antibiotics in distillers grains has raised concern that ethanol plants could breed and disperse drug-resistant bacteria and that those bugs could share their genes with bacterial species that cause human diseases. Sampling by university and industry researchers has turned up antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the processing streams of ethanol plants.
antibiotics in agriculture “has compromised the efficacy of most antimicrobials used in the U.S. and throughout the world.”
To survive economically, ethanol plants depend on sales of distillers grains, solid material left over from corn fermentation. Distillers grains are a nutritious, high-protein livestock feed.
clipped from: www.grandforksherald.com