Reporter’s Notebook: If you want meat without the drugs, you’ll have to pay for it

In the course of reporting this week’s feature on meat-promoter and regulation-hater Charlie Arnot, I heard a lot of arguments for and against the use of antibiotics to raise piglets to fat

sows, ready to be eaten. But even critics of the Pew Commission tended to agree with their findings, and the best argument against regulating the drug usage wasn’t used.

See, swine flu and E. coli outbreaks suck, but so does being too poor

to afford a pound of meat. And if federal regulators do what they want

to do about cutting out non-therapeutic use of antibiotics, there’s at

least one study that says the resulting changes to the meat industry

will end up in higher prices at the butcher shop.