I have a little more time to give a less snarky answer.
First, IMO, we should all be thanking God every day that we, as Americans, spend less on food than any humans in history, or even prehistory. Your cave-dwelling ancestors spent almost their entire life hunting and gathering. We spend about 10% of our income, thus about 10% of our average 40-50 hour work week "hunting and gathering" food.
And most of that "10% of the average American's income" bill for food is spent on convenience. Strip out fast food and prepared food, and that number drops. Even on raw, unprocessed food, much of what you spend goes to transport and handling.
So, how amazingly lucky are we, that we can have tons of cheap food, from around the world, brought almost to our door, for almost nothing.
In fact, we are
so spoiled, that we can even be picky about exactly how how food is grown. "Organic" vs. conventional. GMO or not. Grass fed vs. corn fed. What a time to be alive.
Now, in case you haven't figured, my bias is that "organic" is so much bullcrap. To be labeled "organic" USDA gives you a list of substances you can use in "organic" production. Many people think that "organic" is chemical free. Of course, the whole world is chemicals, so nothing is chemical free. But "organic" is not free of pesticides. "Organic" simply allows a smaller list of pesticides to be used. Some benign, some not so much. Aspirin, atropine, and vaccines are allowed in "organic" animals. If you've got a half hour, here's a link to allowed/not allowed
The National List of Allowed and Prohibited SubstancesAs to her two concerns. First antibiotics. There was probably concern in the past, when antibiotics were common in feed. As far as I know, that practice is no longer used. And my understanding is not that the concern is humans ingesting antibiotics, the concern was that any contamination on the cow, such as e.coli, would become resistant to those antibiotics. So if you got a bit of e.coli in your hamburger, and it was a resistant strain, you were in trouble. So I don't believe that's still a concern.
Frankly, the opposition to antibiotics puzzles me. If a cow gets sick, wouldn't you want it medicated? Would you rather eat a steak with a microscopic trace of penicillin, or one from a steer that suffered from an otherwise curable disease?
Next, hormones. Want to avoid hormones in meat and milk? Don't eat meat and milk.
It's the only way. Cows give milk because they've given birth to a calf, and their body is producing crap-tons of hormones that tell their udder to make milk. Why do steers grow? Because their body is producing growth hormones. Hormones are a natural part of the animal.
So the concern is that producers give added hormones. Okay. How much is too much? They amount given is very small, because hormones, by their nature, act in very small amounts. Also by their nature, hormones act by being metabolized. In other words,
used up. Why would producers give an expensive supplement to their animals that would not be metabolized, but deposited in excess in milk and meat?
Next point: The hormones are
animal hormones. Even if they somehow passed to humans, would they even have an effect?
Final point, your body also metabolizes the milk and meat. Assume that somehow excess hormones got into the milk and meat. First they would have to survive processing, such as slaughter or pasteurization. Or processing into butter or ice cream. Then they would have to survive the cooking process. Wonder what 10 minutes on a grill does to hormones?
Finally, they would have to survive digestion. I think you could probably swallow a beef hormone implant, and no hormone would survive your stomach acid to get into your system. But that's a guess. And again, it is a hormone for cattle. Why should it effect your system?
I think the same processing, cooking, digesting, and metabolizing arguments could be made for antibiotics.
