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Antibiotics in feed

Econ101

Well-known member
Communicable disease experts aim to end antibiotic use in livestock



Agriculture Online

6/22/2006



This week, the Infectious Diseases Society of America (ISDA), an organization representing 8,000 infectious disease physicians and scientists, announced it is endorsing the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (PAMTA), which is sponsored by Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Representative Sherrod Brown (D-OH).



The legislation would withdraw FDA approval for feed-additive use of seven specific antibiotics classes: penicillins, tetracyclines, macrolides, lincosamides, streptogramins, aminoglycosides, and sulfonamides. To make that happen, the Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act would be amended, unless FDA finds the use of a particular class is safe based on current scientific understanding. Each of these classes contains antibiotics also used in human medicine.



According to IDSA, the additives "are used to promote slightly faster growth and to compensate for stressful, crowded conditions at intensive livestock and poultry facilities," rather than being used to treat sick animals. The organization says it hopes the legislation will help preserve the effectiveness of these drugs in human medicine.



"Physicians, nurses and now infectious disease professionals are all calling for federal laws to curb the needless use of antibiotics in animals raised for food because it appears to threaten how well we will be able to treat our human patients with antibiotics," said David Wallinga, M.D., a physician with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.



The American Medical Association, the American Nurses Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Geriatrics Society, the American Public Health Association, the National Association of County and City Health Officials, the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture, and other organizations have also called for an end to the routine use of medically important antibiotics as feed additives.



"There is growing concern among infectious diseases professionals that antimicrobial agents' effectiveness in treating life-threatening infections is becoming compromised by increasing bacterial resistance to these therapies," said Martin Blaser, M.D., the president of IDSA.





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Anonymous

Guest
Now what will probably occur, since the poultry, beef, and pork industries wouldn't do it themselves, is there will be legislation passed that makes even getting these drugs for legitimate purposes (such as diseased animals) very difficult...Will end up having to go thru a vet- or have them vet administered in order to doctor something (Soapweed will have to teach his vet to rope :wink: )....Since industry didn't react- government will overreact- which will cost the producer...
 

Brad S

Well-known member
Bob Bohlander DVM north Platte published the math showing how much drugs must be fed to reach theraputic blood levels, and no one feeds that much. Drug feeding IS a problem.
 

Econ101

Well-known member
Brad S said:
Bob Bohlander DVM north Platte published the math showing how much drugs must be fed to reach theraputic blood levels, and no one feeds that much. Drug feeding IS a problem.

Brad, did he do his research on poultry or beef?
 

Econ101

Well-known member
Brad, I did find the article and there was a little misinformation about feeding cattle in a pen vs. forage in on the range. I will discuss that in the next post. The policy recomendations and conclusions are as follows:


Policy Recommendations

EPA Should Regulate Both Surface and Ground Water.

In the past, the EPA did not pay attention to groundwater, lagoons, or sprayfield seepage or runoff since they were all treated as nonpoint-source pollution. The agency should regulate all bodies of water equally to have a well rounded solution as it did for toxic waste control. This method asks for either a new regulation and/or a cross function management in the same agency. The EPA could have their Chinese walls that maintain the level of confidentiality within its sub-units, but there is a need to share information to treat the current problems. Yet, in order to share information to tackle important tasks, lower ranking staff need approval from higher up management. If the EPA’s leaders could solve their “red tape” characteristic by either amending their laws and/or finding a successful strategy to coordinate its members within different units, their goal of having cleaner water can be attained.

EPA Should Invest in More Man And Legal Power to Enforce the Clean Water Act.

At this moment, the EPA is like a paper tiger. Investing in more staff should make the agency monitor the problem more thoroughly. To have more staff without legal authority is like having patrol officers on duty without guns. Giving EPA authority to enforce the laws should make those who refuse to abide by them rethink their actions. However, by giving the EPA more power to enforce the law, there might be some revolt from farmers. Moreover, the EPA needs to have a good governance mechanism that will check the performance of its staff to assure that their increasing power would not promote corruption in every level of the management.

EPA Should Invest in New Technology that Can Remove Antibiotics or Hormones from Water.

This method requires structural change from the existing water management plants in the U.S. The technology to remove antibiotics is available and used in European countries. However, the start up cost might be too expensive for state and local communities that have to borrow from federal government or from the public (by issuing bonds) to construct such a plant. Yet, if the EPA has good public relations with the media and non-government environmental agencies, pressure from the public can spin political behavior into accepting the need of its people. Then hope of having such a technology might not be too far fetched.

EPA Should Require Instigators Take Full or Partial Responsibility for Their Farm Operators.

Most instigators are monopolies who have a higher profit than farmers. They can invest in regional projects to treat or reduce waste. At this moment, the EPA suggests that they volunteer to help. However, corporations are not charities; they often prefer to cut costs and gain benefits by shifting the clean up cost to local farmers. By issuing a Clean Water Act permit to only farmers, most corporations can refuse to take full or partial responsibility for their outsource farm productions. Therefore, EPA should require instigators to obtain permits for their farmers or become involved in projects to treat or reduce waste. However, instigators can migrate from one state to another and establish their facilities, but farmers have difficulty in changing their locations. Therefore, the issue of capital flights is the major weakness of this method; corporations can move overseas. In this regard, the EPA should work together with the non-government environmental agencies to push the issue forward. Since animal waste creates pollution in the poor, rural communities, there is an inequality in distribution of risks. Therefore, these environmental justice groups and local individuals can motivate corporations to take full or partial responsibility of their animal waste.

FSIS Should Start to Label Whether Antibiotics Are Used in Beef. Likewise, FDA Should Do the Same for Dairy Products.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) and the FDA should label whether antibiotics are used in consumer products as in beef and dairy. This method would provide information for consumers about the source of their products and the risks. Even though the organic farmers have pushed labeling as the means to their target groups, they often encounter obstacles by large corporations. For example, there is a case of organic farmers in Maine against Monsanto’s genetically engineered Bovine Growth Hormone rBGH (Stranahan, 2004). Likewise, labeling antibiotic free products is prone to have the same consequence. However, if the FDA bans the use of antibiotics, the substance should be inspected and notified by both the FSIS and FDA, and the products should be label so.

Introduce Tax on Waste.

Taxes can be used to motivate or coerce farmers and instigators to take responsibility for animal waste. With the motivational approach, farmers’ voluntary cleanup cost can be counted as tax credits. Similar to what Florida has done to solve its dry-cleaning contaminated sites since 1998, these tax credits can be applied toward Corporate Income Tax or Intangible Personal Property Tax (Florida EPA, 2004). This method can improve farmers’ behaviors by giving them monetary incentive. However, the real cost would be on the taxpayers’ dollars. On the contrary, with the coercive approach, the tax on waste shall be collected as a mean to promote farmers conscious to take proper care of the waste produced. While the tax would shape farmers and instigators’ behavior, the money collected should be used to perform the cleaning act such as to invest in the new technology to remove antibiotics. Although this coercive approach might not be welcomed by most farmers, the cost of cleaning would rest upon the responsible parties, not the public.

Conclusions

The iron triangle of state, the dominant elite and the capitalism mode of thinking provide the power with which Baconian-Cartesian’s reductionism established its supremacy. The scientific agriculture can be the source of money and profits; however, neither money nor profits can be the source of sustainable economy, or creating the life supporting capacity (Shiva, 1988). When an antibiotics-created problem is rooted in modern science created by intervention through science beliefs, the problem could either be solved by science or by local knowledge and power. For scientific solution, a new technology can be introduced to remove antibiotics from the non-point source pollution. However, by educating the public, various environmental justice groups could give both knowledge and power back to the people. If the educated public eats organic beef and drinks organic milk, the consumer’s behaviors would shift the behaviors in the supply side to be more responsible for the quality their products by changing their method of production. As there is no one best way to solve a problem, the combining power of science and local knowledge should be ideal. However, the real solution is based on the ethics of those who are in power (whether in the public or private sectors).

To believe that everyone would lend their invisible hand by doing what is best for them and thus creating the best for society is quite a myopic vision. Nevertheless, to have a democratic society which provides ways to monitor, shape, and change the current practices is not impossible. Yet, the mainstream media that can be the bridge to educate the public is in itself not uniform, uninformed and is often biased toward capital gains. Therefore, the solutions should be both using the alternative media and having green voices in the decision making process. Both are necessary means to shift the attention away from seeking benefits to a more environmentally friendly mode of thinking.

The benefits of subtherapeutic use of antibiotics should be weighed with the risks when deciding to regulate antibiotics as feed additives in the cattle industry. While the benefits seem economically sound for our current demands, the recently discovered environmental effects should be factored into the equation. Environmental effects may not be a high priority to policy-makers but the consequences of ignoring such a factor can be severe.

The article is at:

http://tinyurl.com/jy3xq
 

Econ101

Well-known member
This part of the article showed the influence of corporate ag. on policy formation and one of my main gripes about what is happening in Washington D.C.:

While the future of banning antibiotics used in animal feeds looks very promising under the FDA’s Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act of 2005, the EPA regulations have to adapt to FDA’s rules. However, at this moment, most EPA regulations required only voluntary action or loose regulations such as empty shells to cover large corporations. We, therefore, propose the following recommendations to solve the existing problems related to the issue of managing animal waste containing antibiotics to farmers and instigators:

1. Change from Animal feeding Operations (AFOs) or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) to Rotational Grazing.

The majority of antibiotics used in cattle feedings are not to treat disease, but rather to promote growth and to offset unnatural, crowded, stressful, and unhygienic conditions on industrial-scale farms (Florini et al, 2005). In 1997, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended that farmers stop using antibiotics prescribed for humans as growth promoters in animals. In 1999, the European Union followed WHO recommendations and banned the use of antibiotics in animal feeding. Those countries experienced no significant impact on animal health or productivity, food safety, or meat prices. Most importantly, levels of resistant bacteria declined sharply (WHO, 2000).

This alternative would provide free space for cattle to roam. When the animals are happy and have no stress from the inhumane living conditions, there is no need to use antibiotics to improve the growth. Take, for example, the cattle in Kobe, Japan, which are free to roam, have regular massages, and drink beer. They don’t need antibiotics and Kobe beef is the highest quality.

2. Composting

Colorado State University is conducting a continual project (2005-2006) to see whether appropriate composting techniques would help the degradation of antibiotics and minimize the spread of antibiotics-resistance genes into the environment and to human health. If the result is positive, it would ease the conflict between environmental policy makers and animal farmers (Pruden-Bagchi et al, 2005).

3. Phrase out the Use of Lagoons and Sprayfields to Treat Animal Waste. Lagoons and sprayfields are the biggest contributor to the problem of antibiotics getting into the environment. Seepage and runoff from these area are the major sources of groundwater and surface water contamination. Farmers can use other alternatives such as composting and/or bio-fuel as alternative(s).

4. Use Wetlands to treat runoff from storms

Storm runoff is a random externality that contaminates surface and underground water. Using wetlands to trap them would assure that antibiotics would be in one area. After that we can use other scientific methods such as using fungi to degrade antibiotics to clean the water (Baker, 2002).

5. Promoting Bio-fuel

This method allows farmers to recycle animal waste into usable and profitable energy that will reduce farmers’ expense on electricity. This method would trap pollution from animal waste into pressure tanks that will generate gas to run electric dynamos. However, the initial startup cost might be high. Therefore, farmers can write their plan and apply for an EQUIP fund. This method would pay for itself in the long run because farmers would not have to pay for electricity and could sell their electricity to the cities when the power exceeds the usability.

6. Revised land used patterns

This alternative asks for a well rounded sustainable approach to deal with managing a farm by including all the above alternatives. Instead of having AFOs, farmers should raise cattle in rotational grazing manner in which animal waste will be collected and used in bio-fuel and/or composting. In the lower area where runoff wastewater is collected, there should be wetlands to trap antibiotics.
 

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