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California Mulls Antibiotic Use In Livestock Measure

BRG

Well-known member
California Mulls Antibiotic Use In Livestock Measure California State Sen. Dean Florez has introduced a bill to restrict antibiotic use in animal ag. As introduced, SB 416 would:
Prohibit, commencing Jan. 1, 2012, a school or school district from serving poultry and meat products (from which the animals have been) treated with antibiotics.
Prohibit, commencing Jan. 1, 2015, a person from using antibiotics for non-therapeutic and prophylactic use in any animal raised for the production of any human food product.
Require state and local governments, when purchasing meat supplies, to prefer meat supplies produced without the use of medically important antibiotics as feed additives.
The bill can be viewed at www.nmaonline.org/Bill.pdf.
-- National Meat Association
 

jeff in ca

Well-known member
Term limits don't work. This is just another example. This guy is seeking higher office. In order to do that, he is making a name for himself, and appealing to the urban voters of the state. By introducing some high profile bills in his relative short stay as an Assembly man. Term-limits have ruined California. The bureaucratic machine runs this state, instead of the legislature ie., the people. I doubt this bill or his other bill banning the docking of dairy cows, will get beyond committee. The state is broke and economically neither bill are feasible. But then again, this is just another reason to sell out and find someplace more ag friendly.

Just my take

Jeff from Ca
 

PureCountry

Well-known member
Jeff, being Canadian I'm totally unfamiliar with Cal's politics. You say the state is broke, why is that? Frivilous spending, as it is here in Alberta? Just curious.

If this particular politician has an alterior motive I can see your distaste for him having full merit. However, as far as banning antibiotics in the terms of this bill goes, it is an inevitable change coming to agriculture in my opinion.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
PureCountry said:
Jeff, being Canadian I'm totally unfamiliar with Cal's politics. You say the state is broke, why is that? Frivilous spending, as it is here in Alberta? Just curious.

If this particular politician has an alterior motive I can see your distaste for him having full merit. However, as far as banning antibiotics in the terms of this bill goes, it is an inevitable change coming to agriculture in my opinion.

Antibiotics and steroids (implants) both...And if the industry doesn't make major moves to voluntarily do it-government will....

The "all natural" top dollar/premiums being paid for cattle the last few years continues to grow- and hopefully will voluntarily move the industry...
 

jeff in ca

Well-known member
PureCountry said:
Jeff, being Canadian I'm totally unfamiliar with Cal's politics. You say the state is broke, why is that? Frivilous spending, as it is here in Alberta? Just curious.

California, is Liberal Land USA, we spend tons to keep people on the dole. At the expense of the tax base. I know this is not a political forum but is what we all talk about around here lately. I know the industry is changing and voluntary change is way better than a government mandate. It just makes my blood boil when a politician punishes an industry to further his or her cause.
 

Cal

Well-known member
A blurb from Folsom Prison Blues seems appropriate. Is there enough "premium" out there for the whole industry to go drug free? Antibiotics and implants improve our bottom line, and if they didn't feeders would discontinue their usage. Let the market and sound science dictate policy.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
This e-mail I received from a lurker- of an Op-Ed out of the NY Times shows this isn't just a California issue- its a Worldwide issue -- and imho- whether the issue is real or over hyped- if the industry doesn't make some fast moves to curtail antibiotic use in livestock- the only livestock antibiotics that will be available will have to be administered by a Veterinarian....

Pathogens in Our Pork

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: March 14, 2009
We don’t add antibiotics to baby food and Cocoa Puffs so that children get fewer ear infections. That’s because we understand that the overuse of antibiotics is already creating “superbugs” resistant to medication.

Yet we continue to allow agribusiness companies to add antibiotics to animal feed so that piglets stay healthy and don’t get ear infections. Seventy percent of all antibiotics in the United States go to healthy livestock, according to a careful study by the Union of Concerned Scientists — and that’s one reason we’re seeing the rise of pathogens that defy antibiotics.

These dangerous pathogens are now even in our food supply. Five out of 90 samples of retail pork in Louisiana tested positive for MRSA — an antibiotic-resistant staph infection — according to a peer-reviewed study published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology last year. And a recent study of retail meats in the Washington, D.C., area found MRSA in one pork sample, out of 300, according to Jianghong Meng, the University of Maryland scholar who conducted the study.

Regardless of whether the bacteria came from the pigs or from humans who handled the meat, the results should sound an alarm bell, for MRSA already kills more than 18,000 Americans annually, more than AIDS does.
MRSA (pronounced “mersa”) stands for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. People often get it from hospitals, but as I wrote in my last column, a new strain called ST398 is emerging and seems to find a reservoir in modern hog farms. Research by Peter Davies of the University of Minnesota suggests that 25 percent to 39 percent of American hogs carry MRSA.

Public health experts worry that pigs could pass on the infection by direct contact with their handlers, through their wastes leaking into ground water (one study has already found antibiotic-resistant bacteria entering ground water from hog farms), or through their meat, though there has been no proven case of someone getting it from eating pork. Thorough cooking will kill the bacteria, but people often use the same knife to cut raw meat and then to chop vegetables. Or they plop a pork chop on a plate, cook it and then contaminate it by putting it back on the original plate.

Yet the central problem here isn’t pigs, it’s humans. Unlike Europe and even South Korea, the United States still bows to agribusiness interests by permitting the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics in animal feed. That’s unconscionable.

The peer-reviewed Medical Clinics of North America concluded last year that antibiotics in livestock feed were “a major component” in the rise in antibiotic resistance. The article said that more antibiotics were fed to animals in North Carolina alone than were administered to the nation’s entire human population.

“We don’t give antibiotics to healthy humans,” said Robert Martin, who led a Pew Commission on industrial farming that examined antibiotic use. “So why give them to healthy animals just so we can keep them in crowded and unsanitary conditions?”

The answer is simple: politics.

Legislation to ban the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics in agriculture has always been blocked by agribusiness interests. Louise Slaughter of New York, who is the sole microbiologist in the House of Representatives, said she planned to reintroduce the legislation this coming week.
We’re losing the ability to treat humans,” she said. “We have misused one of the best scientific products we’ve had.”
That’s an almost universal view in the public health world. The Infectious Diseases Society of America has declared antibiotic resistance a “public health crisis” and recounts the story of Rebecca Lohsen, a 17-year-old New Jersey girl who died from MRSA in 2006. She came down with what she thought was a sore throat, endured months in the hospital, and finally died because the microbes were stronger than the drugs.

This will be an important test for President Obama and his agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack. Traditionally, the Agriculture Department has functioned mostly as a protector of agribusiness interests, but Mr. Obama and Mr. Vilsack have both said all the right things about looking after eaters as well as producers.

So Mr. Obama and Mr. Vilsack, will you line up to curb the use of antibiotics in raising American livestock? That is evidence of an industrial farming system that is broken: for the sake of faster-growing hogs, we’re empowering microbes that endanger our food supply and threaten our lives.
 

PureCountry

Well-known member
:clap::clap::clap::clap::clap:
She'll be comin' round the mountain when she comes,
She'll be comin' round the mountain when she comes....
 

PureCountry

Well-known member
Cal said:
A blurb from Folsom Prison Blues seems appropriate. Is there enough "premium" out there for the whole industry to go drug free? Antibiotics and implants improve our bottom line, and if they didn't feeders would discontinue their usage. Let the market and sound science dictate policy.

You're talking opposites Cal. If the market dictates policy, we end up with a deregulated system in which power and utility companies, energy and resource corporations, as well as food service and packers dictate policy to the government.

Sound science is what this antibiotic useage is all about. Sound science has proven that bugs and superbugs are rapidly adapting and evolving into new strains. In short, yesterday's drugs can't keep up to tomorrow's bugs.

As for the bottom line, there are alot of feedlots using antibiotics only on the animals that need it. There are alot not using HGP's, and are still in business while others are not. HGP's and rampid antibiotic use are not neccessities of life for the feedlot industry. To say they are is just false.

THink of it this way - if your aging Mother or Father was in an institution where they kept getting sick, always something they were catching, would you keep medicating them, or would you maybe question the system that keeps them in a confined space obviously laden with disease?

Now put that in terms of livestock. Cattle in confinement is no different. The same pens, fed on, bedded on, defacated on for 10, 20, 30, 40 years? What should we expect? And have we really become so naive as to think that annually cleaning corrals with loaders and trucks - a highly technical practice - is going to rid the entire facility of bacteria and viruses? Yes, that was sarcasm. I've worked in feedlots, been around or in them all my life. The whole theory behind a feedlot is to fatten things fast - that's it! It has nothing to do with sound science, but feeders have a bottome line, and when things get tight, they look for solutions like any good business person. And hooray, here comes the knight in shining armour, the drug company rep with his shield and flag bearing the names of all the products they peddle, and all the test and studies they've sponsored at every major Ag School or institution in North America. Hmmmm, what a coincidence that when you pay for the research, it comes out in your favor. And so the hard-pressed-for-a-solution-feeder has to try something for these sickly cattle that just keep getting 'sicklier', and falls into a habit of buying pills from the pusher, which certainly show immediate results, but at a long term cost mortgaged to how many generations over how many decades.

Dramatic, yes. Borderline theatrical, sure. But don't tell me that there is no other way to feed cattle in North America. Feedlots do not have to be these dirty, filthy places where animals struggle to stay healthy. If they are getting sick, we need to question the sanitary conditions they're in, and those of where they came from. The farm that raised them can be equally to blame for their lack of immune system strength, be it nutritional or genetic. Ok, I'm done.
 

Kato

Well-known member
This antibiotic thing is the achilles heel of industrial farming. We may be surprised some day to find that of all the measures taken over the past many years to save family farms, this may well be the big one that does the job.

I've felt for years that giant intensive livestock operations were not sustainable in the long run. If you were to pull the plug on antibiotics in poultry tomorrow, I bet the industry would crash faster than you could count to ten. Working at a vet clinic dealing with large hog operations has shown me a lot about this subject.

I would bet there isn't a cattle producer around who would be willing to to the the lengths the big hog barns do with their biosecurity. It's amazing what they will do to keep the herd clean. Replacements spending time in quarantine, and not being allowed in until they pass blood tests. No outside people allowed on the premises without showering in to the barn. No trucks in the yard. Any animal taken out of the barn will not be coming back, therefore health problems are dealt with in the barn with no trips to the vet's. And still they need medicated feed, at least for the feeders. Once in a while a disease sneaks in, and the answer is to depopulate.

Would we do this? I doubt it. Can anyone imagine showering in to a feedlot? That would be the day. You can't have this level of biosecurity in a large outdoor operation like a feedlot, where animals come from all over the map.

But in smaller operations, even hog operations, this is not necessary. The pigs get fresh air, they get natural exposures, and they have immune systems that function. It can be done on smaller farms, whether they are cattle, hog or poultry.

We don't feed antibiotics. We don't need to, and neither does pretty much everybody else in our situation. If something gets sick it gets treated, but that's it. Vaccination goes a long way to prevent the need for antibiotics if the animals aren't subjected to the stresses of a large feedlot. For instance we fed almost two hundred of our own calves this winter, and did not pull the needle out even once. And this is not an unusual situation with home raised calves. I bet there are lots of people on this site that can say the same thing.

And that may someday save the family farm. 8)
 

Cal

Well-known member
I'm giong to view claims that modern meat production methods and consumption is harmful to humans with skepticism. Could antibiotic resistance in humans be caused by over prescribing antibiotics to humans by physicians literally for decades be to blame more so than therapeutic antibiotics used in meat production? We seem to be creating more "global warming" :roll: emissions than what is caused from the transportation sector, so why not?

In 06 we gave the drug free thing a try, meaning no Rumensin to backgrounded calves, and anything treated for sickness was identified. Feed conversion definitely went down, there was no premium even though "drug free" bidders were present, sale weights were down from years before, and the calves went to a feedyard and were promptly implanted and fed Rumensin anyway.

We have a big world to feed and need to do so as competitively as possible, with a high degree of efficiency, while allowing the free market to dictate supplies to the niche markets. The possibility of more restrictive regulations during an uncertain economic period really needs to raise the red flags. At the very least we need to proceed with an abundance of caution.

If the market dictates policy, we end up with a deregulated system in which power and utility companies, energy and resource corporations, as well as food service and packers dictate policy to the government.
And this is worse than policy dictated by those in government with varying degrees of practical knowledge and hidden agendas?
 

PureCountry

Well-known member
Okay, let's leave the politics out of it I guess because it's a minor detail compared to the real message in this topic.

You said:
We have a big world to feed and need to do so as competitively as possible, with a high degree of efficiency, while allowing the free market to dictate supplies to the niche markets.

My whole point is that I'm trying to get you to think about this exact point!! Being more efficient, producing more, being competitive, blah, blah, blah - NONE OF IT MATTERS if you don't know what you're selling. You say you're skeptical about the effects on human health - what do you think happens to all of this stuff? Implants, antibiotics, herbicides, Ivomec, etc, etc Do you honestly believe that such things can be used over and over and not build up any residual in the soil or our bodies over time?

All I'm trying to say is think about it. If you even remotely question that something may be harmful to your health, why would you risk exposure to it? A healthy bottom line won't buy back your health if something happens. My Mom was always the one to do the Ivomec every year when I was growing up. After about 8 years of using it, she got sick, real sick, the day we Ivomeced everything. She stayed real sick for about a week. We never suspected the Ivomec, but a month later we were helping a neighbour, she ran the Ivomec, and she got damn sick again. To this day if she even smells it she gets sick. We haven't used it since then.

There are ways to get great gains and achieve profits without having to use HGP's and antibiotics. That's been proven, so we don't need to argue the danger of these products. If you can achieve your goals without them, why use them? As for the buyers sitting on their hands when your "natural" calves came through, should we be surprised? Their job is to fill their orders as cheaply as possible.
 

Cal

Well-known member
what do you think happens to all of this stuff? Implants, antibiotics, herbicides, Ivomec, etc, etc Do you honestly believe that such things can be used over and over and not build up any residual in the soil or our bodies over time?
This sort of response almost reminds me of the late Rachel Carson and the flawed science of DDT. http://www.aaenvironment.com/DDT.htm All of these compounds are broken down in the system or the environment, are highly regulated, and safe when used according to labeling. But, say, I'll watch Dr. G Medical Examiner a little more closely and see if any of these things are turning up in her toxicology reports. :D

If you even remotely question that something may be harmful to your health, why would you risk exposure to it?
Like UV rays from the sun :???: Sorry, not an alarmist, not jumping on bandwagons without a damn good proven reason.

My Mom was always the one to do the Ivomec every year when I was growing up. After about 8 years of using it, she got sick, real sick, the day we Ivomeced everything. She stayed real sick for about a week. We never suspected the Ivomec, but a month later we were helping a neighbour, she ran the Ivomec, and she got damn sick again. To this day if she even smells it she gets sick. We haven't used it since then.
And because she's developed an apparent sensitivity to it means that it's inherently a bad or unsafe product when used in accordance to labeling? No. Have you found an alternative for parasite control? My wife gets extremely ill if she eats a salad from certain restaurants that use a specific preservative. Does this mean that it's a dangerous product and does more harm than good? No, only that her system is hypersensitive to it. My brother gets very ill after eating a banana. Does this mean bananas are bad. No. Many people have died from peanut allergies. Should they be banned?

As for the buyers sitting on their hands when your "natural" calves came through, should we be surprised? Their job is to fill their orders as cheaply as possible.
No, I wasn't really surprised at all. It sounded like smoke and mirrors to me from the beginning. The point I'd like to get across to producers is if they choose to forego proven, profitable management tools and techniques in order to recieve a premium, make sure they have a buyer locked in before any changes are made or else one may not have their expectations met.
 

PureCountry

Well-known member
Well, I can't do much about UV rays, so I guess I'll focus on soils and HGP's. :wink:

And I can't see the validity in comparing food allergies to what I gave as an example, so I'll leave that one alone. As for parasite control, it's different from 1 climatic zone to another, but we don't use any. Haven't for several years and have no problems. And low and behold, we actually have dung beetles coming back in our pastures in certain places. :lol:

Thanks for the thought provoking insight Cal. It's good to debate a little bit back and forth, instead of just posting pictures and talking weather. :wink:
 

Soapweed

Well-known member
You gentlemen are both to be commended for having a good debate in civil fashion. Thank you. :wink:

As far as the "safety" of Ivomectin, I have heard that it is used purposely on people in Third World countries to rid them of parasites. I learned this many years ago, and can't vouch for the truth of it then or now.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Antibiotics for livestock are target of bill in House
By Georgina Gustin
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
03/18/2009

The debate took its latest turn on Tuesday, when U.S. Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-NY, introduced legislation that would require drug manufacturers to go through a new approval process to ensure that antibiotics used in farm animals don't pose a danger to human health.

Slaughter said mounting evidence showed that routine antibiotic use in factory farms was leading to drug resistance in humans. Many medical professionals fear the development of a so-called lethal "superbug" resistant to treatment.

The pharmaceutical and agricultural industries have pushed against similar efforts in the past. Pork producers say that antibiotics are a necessary part of good farm management and that the health risk is minimal.

"The ones currently being used in animals are old antibiotics. They've been used for 50 years," said Scott Hurd, an epidemiologist for Iowa State University. "If the 'superbug' was going to develop, it would have developed already."

Hurd is the former undersecretary for food safety at the Food and Drug Administration, and his research has been supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the pharmaceutical industry.

Illinois and Missouri are among the country's top pork-producing states, and producers here and elsewhere in the Midwestern "hog belt" say antibiotic use is exaggerated. But the loss of antibiotics as a tool could cost the industry millions of dollars, they caution. MORE METRO
Get news, columns, photos and multimedia from the St. Louis area

"There are some conditions where a low-dose therapy may be the right decision," said Craig Rowles, a veterinarian and hog producer from Caroll, Iowa, the nation's top pork producing state. "People think they're used indiscriminately, and that's not true."

The legislation Slaughter introduced is similar to others that have failed in recent years. The bill aims to curtail the use of antibiotics for everyday use. Critics say the drugs fatten the animals more quickly and compensate for crowded conditions in large-scale operations. Slaughter said 84 percent of feedlots administered antibiotics in feed or water.

"It makes absolutely no sense to hand this to animals that aren't sick," she said. "We're misusing one of the best scientific tools we have."

It's not clear how much antibiotic use in food animals has risen in the past three decades, since confined animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, became the norm in American livestock production. One study, by the Animal Health Institute, a pharmaceutical industry group, showed that volume sales have gone up, but the report looked at only a three-year period.

"It's one of the great tragedies of this issue that there are simply no good data, gathered by a central agency," said Margaret Mellon, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental group in Washington.

Mellon's group conducted a study showing that American food animals consume 70 percent of the antibiotics in this country — 25 million pounds a year — for non-therapeutic uses.

Farmers say those uses are justified, and claim there's a lack of evidence showing a link between animal antibiotic use and resistance in humans. "We don't take antibiotics in the morning so we don't get sick," Hurd said. "But people don't understand that on the farm, we want to prevent disease."

But Mellon, and critics of animal antibiotic use, including the American Medical Association, point to growing evidence of a link. The European Union has banned the use of some antibiotics for routine use.
 

Big Swede

Well-known member
Pure Country how do you control lice without chemicals? Our cattle would tear the fences down this time of year without some sort of pour on. Maybe you don't have a lice problem in the winter and spring and if you don't tell us how you do it.
 

PureCountry

Well-known member
Well I'd like to say something real technical is at work that's a trade secret, passed down from generations of Irish ancestors, but I'd be full of Irish BS. I really attribute it to nothing more than the cattle have developed a resistance, so I can't take credit for anything.

KEEP IN MIND, I'm not saying there aren't lice on these cattle, or bugs of any kind. There are certainly naturally ocurring critters of some kind on them, like the deer or anything else. But we don't see big patches of hair rubbed off like you do in other herds, even though most of them are still using Ivermectin products or something similar. When I'm brand inspecting at the area feedlots and auction markets, I'm disgusted with the conditon of some cattle that come in. Everything from calves to bulls, with hair rubbed off all over them. So I really can't explain it.

The first year we stopped using the pour-ons, we had some purebred Angus cows that rubbed hair off their tailheads and hips. None of the Galloways do that, and the Angus-cross cows we still have don't either. Lots of them rub on trees and scratch on fence posts, but we don't see any hair loss, or any ill effects as far as total herd health goes. The Galloway double hair coat I truly feel has something to do with it. In the summer, the ones that shed out their guard hairs will get flies on them. The ones that keep their shag, although have a harder time with the heat, never seem to get the flies. The flies can't get through the hair, and don't seem to bother.

Hope that helps. :D
 
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