Ideas worth spreading

TEDxYouth@CEHS

December 2018

|67K views

Antibiotics changed our food. Here's how to change it back

In this sobering talk, health writer Maryn McKenna explains how the use of antibiotics in food production transformed modern agriculture and the way the world eats -- but not for the overall better. With stories highlighting the success of activists, policymakers and the general public to reform production practices, McKenna stresses one key point: "Consumers have power."

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This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxYouth@CEHS, an independent event.

Read more about TEDx.

In this sobering talk, health writer Maryn McKenna explains how the use of antibiotics in food production transformed modern agriculture and the way the world eats -- but not for the overall better. With stories highlighting the success of activists, policymakers and the general public to reform production practices, McKenna stresses one key point: "Consumers have power."

This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxYouth@CEHS, an independent event.

Read more about TEDx.

About the speaker

Maryn McKenna

Journalist & Author

Maryn McKenna is an independent journalist who specializes in public health, global health and food policy. She is a columnist for Wired Magazine and contributes to several prominent magazines and newspapers. A Senior Fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University, Maryn is the author of the 2017 bestseller and award-winning BIG CHICKEN: The Incredible Story of How Antibiotics Created Modern Agriculture and Changed the Way the World Eats. Her 2015 TED Talk, “What do we do when antibiotics don’t work any more?” has been viewed 1.6 million times and translated into 33 languages. Though Maryn lives in Atlanta, she married into a family who have been Mainers since the 1830s.

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