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Canadian Doctors Oppose Agriculture Antibiotic Use

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CMA urges prescription-only antibiotics for agricultural use



Source: Canadian Medical Association (CMA) - August 25, 2011



Antibiotics shouldn't be used in Canada's agricultural sector except by prescription from veterinarians, the nation's doctors say.



Arguing that antibiotic misuse in the agricultural sector is rampant, delegates to the Canadian Medical Association's 144th annual general meeting in St. John's, Newfoundland, adopted a resolution Wednesday urging the implementation of mandatory veterinary prescriptions for all antibiotics used in animals.



The motion was among a raft of sharp rebukes issued by delegates at the gathering. Others include a condemnation of the Conservative government for continuing to block the inclusion of chrysotile asbestos in the Rotterdam Convention, as well as a stern warning to the public to find safer ways to use cell phones so as to minimize the potentially harmful effect that radio frequencies may have on the brain.



The motion to press for introduction of mandatory antibiotic prescriptions in agriculture flies in the face of the federal government's unwillingness to develop a concerted national response to antibiotic misuse in agriculture or to contain antibiotic resistance within medicine. Critics have repeatedly charged that Ottawa's inaction is deliberate, particularly its failure to establish a Canadian Centre for Antimicrobial Resistance after dissolving a national committee (www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.109-3109) Ottawa has also failed to tighten off-label drug usage on farms (www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.091009). Nor did it act to close a legal loophole allowing massive imports of unapproved drugs for agricultural use (www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.090525).



Delegates argued the government's inertia on the file must end.



"Because agriculture accounts for the highest volume of antibiotic use, the farm environment serves as a reservoir of resistant genes," British Columbia delegate Dr. Bill Mackie told council.



"Low concentrations of antibiotics used in animal feed have been found to induce random mutagenesis," while the dispersal of antibiotics into soil and water have been shown to enhance the risk of breaking natural barriers between bacterial groups via "horizontal transfer of genes" conferring resistance to bacteria that may not have even come in direct contact with the antibiotics, he explained.



This has serious health implications for patients, some of whom are dying as a consequence of resistant infections, particularly as the most common antimicrobials used in agriculture are either identical or related to those administered to humans, Mackie said.



During the early 1990s, vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE) was detected among patients in Europe and a search for a community reservoir of that resistance found VRE in meat and manure on farms where the antimicrobials were used as growth promoters, he explained. Humans exposed to livestock that are colonized with the super bug methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus have also been found to have a 138-fold higher risk of becoming colonized with those bacteria, Mackie said.



Countries such as Denmark that have restricted the use of antimicrobials in agriculture have substantially reduced both antimicrobial consumption and resistance with little economic impact on industry, he argued. Between 1992 and 2008, for example, Danish farmers increased swine production by 47% while halving their use of antibiotics.



Some delegates countered that mandatory prescriptions would indiscriminately raise barriers for Canadian hobby farmers, who are already strictly regulated and make only marginal contributions to the spread of antibiotic resistance, while others questioned whether veterinary prescriptions would be an effective measure of control.



"I believe farming and agricultural processes need to be addressed but I'm not sure this council has a firm knowledge of what those processes are in order to decide on the one and only mechanism by which we have to do that," Alberta delegate Dr. Carolyn Lane explains in an interview. "Veterinarians may just be coerced by their clients to write prescriptions, so I think they and physicians should work together to decide on a way in general that they could address intensive farming practices that have created the need for widespread antibiotic use in agriculture."



more

http://www.cmaj.ca/site/earlyreleases/25aug11_cma-urges-prescription-only-antibiotics-for-agricultural-use.xhtml
 
Oldtimer said:
CMA urges prescription-only antibiotics for agricultural use



Source: Canadian Medical Association (CMA) - August 25, 2011



Antibiotics shouldn't be used in Canada's agricultural sector except by prescription from veterinarians, the nation's doctors say.



Arguing that antibiotic misuse in the agricultural sector is rampant, delegates to the Canadian Medical Association's 144th annual general meeting in St. John's, Newfoundland, adopted a resolution Wednesday urging the implementation of mandatory veterinary prescriptions for all antibiotics used in animals.



The motion was among a raft of sharp rebukes issued by delegates at the gathering. Others include a condemnation of the Conservative government for continuing to block the inclusion of chrysotile asbestos in the Rotterdam Convention, as well as a stern warning to the public to find safer ways to use cell phones so as to minimize the potentially harmful effect that radio frequencies may have on the brain.



The motion to press for introduction of mandatory antibiotic prescriptions in agriculture flies in the face of the federal government's unwillingness to develop a concerted national response to antibiotic misuse in agriculture or to contain antibiotic resistance within medicine. Critics have repeatedly charged that Ottawa's inaction is deliberate, particularly its failure to establish a Canadian Centre for Antimicrobial Resistance after dissolving a national committee (www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.109-3109) Ottawa has also failed to tighten off-label drug usage on farms (www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.091009). Nor did it act to close a legal loophole allowing massive imports of unapproved drugs for agricultural use (www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.090525).



Delegates argued the government's inertia on the file must end.



"Because agriculture accounts for the highest volume of antibiotic use, the farm environment serves as a reservoir of resistant genes," British Columbia delegate Dr. Bill Mackie told council.



"Low concentrations of antibiotics used in animal feed have been found to induce random mutagenesis," while the dispersal of antibiotics into soil and water have been shown to enhance the risk of breaking natural barriers between bacterial groups via "horizontal transfer of genes" conferring resistance to bacteria that may not have even come in direct contact with the antibiotics, he explained.



This has serious health implications for patients, some of whom are dying as a consequence of resistant infections, particularly as the most common antimicrobials used in agriculture are either identical or related to those administered to humans, Mackie said.



During the early 1990s, vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE) was detected among patients in Europe and a search for a community reservoir of that resistance found VRE in meat and manure on farms where the antimicrobials were used as growth promoters, he explained. Humans exposed to livestock that are colonized with the super bug methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus have also been found to have a 138-fold higher risk of becoming colonized with those bacteria, Mackie said.



Countries such as Denmark that have restricted the use of antimicrobials in agriculture have substantially reduced both antimicrobial consumption and resistance with little economic impact on industry, he argued. Between 1992 and 2008, for example, Danish farmers increased swine production by 47% while halving their use of antibiotics.



Some delegates countered that mandatory prescriptions would indiscriminately raise barriers for Canadian hobby farmers, who are already strictly regulated and make only marginal contributions to the spread of antibiotic resistance, while others questioned whether veterinary prescriptions would be an effective measure of control.



"I believe farming and agricultural processes need to be addressed but I'm not sure this council has a firm knowledge of what those processes are in order to decide on the one and only mechanism by which we have to do that," Alberta delegate Dr. Carolyn Lane explains in an interview. "Veterinarians may just be coerced by their clients to write prescriptions, so I think they and physicians should work together to decide on a way in general that they could address intensive farming practices that have created the need for widespread antibiotic use in agriculture."



more

http://www.cmaj.ca/site/earlyreleases/25aug11_cma-urges-prescription-only-antibiotics-for-agricultural-use.xhtml


I think all these companies with factory farms have veterinarians on staff and could continue to do what they are doing if it only takes a vet. prescription to keep antibiotics in the food chain for profit in the factory farms.

Tex
 
EFSA evaluates the public health risk of bacterial strains resistant to certain antimicrobials in food and food-producing animals


2 August 2011



http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/press/news/110802a.htm?WT.mc_id=EFSAHL01&emt=1


http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/topics/topic/amr.htm?wtrl=01



Scientific Opinion on the public health risks of bacterial strains producing extended-spectrum ß-lactamases and/or AmpC ß-lactamases in food and food-producing animals

EFSA Journal 2011;9(8):2322 [95 pp.]. doi:10.2903/j.efsa.2011.2322



http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/2322.htm


tss
 
Tex said:
I think all these companies with factory farms have veterinarians on staff and could continue to do what they are doing if it only takes a vet. prescription to keep antibiotics in the food chain for profit in the factory farms.

Tex

Is this some quote you lifted from Wayne Pacelle, CEO of HSUS? Or was this plagiarized from Ingrid Newkirk of PETA? This is the kind of nonsense they continually spew out. It's difficult to differentiate your post from the likes of PETA, HSUS, etc. Only the most ignorant, misguided and clueless make statements such as this.

Good grief.
 
Beefman said:
Tex said:
I think all these companies with factory farms have veterinarians on staff and could continue to do what they are doing if it only takes a vet. prescription to keep antibiotics in the food chain for profit in the factory farms.

Tex

Is this some quote you lifted from Wayne Pacelle, CEO of HSUS? Or was this plagiarized from Ingrid Newkirk of PETA? This is the kind of nonsense they continually spew out. It's difficult to differentiate your post from the likes of PETA, HSUS, etc. Only the most ignorant, misguided and clueless make statements such as this.

Good grief.


I never heard of any of these people, Beefman. I did actually try to call PETA about an issue once and found them so disorganized as to be quite useless in clearing up anything.

Just because you don't like what I said is no reason to call it plagiarism.

Do you have any difficulty in believing company vets will write any prescription those writing their checks will ask them to?

I have known direct evidence that there are vets who will break all kinds of rules when it comes to these companies and the companies will do the same.

You must be speaking from inexperience. That puts you closer to the categories you accuse me of plagiarizing than I could ever be. It is just something PETA members would do.

Tex
 
Problem is the use/overuse/abuse of non-therapeutic antibiotics by some- is going to make it tough for everyone else to get Ag antibiotics when they are really needed...

And they won't need PETA or HSUS to get it done- as the International medical community has been calling for stricter regulation for years- and lately have been joined by the US CDC, AMA, Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and several other medical and scientific groups... FDA is now looking into the issue - and I predict will be forced to put on more regulation...

Personally I like it the way it is- and use "all natural- no antibiotics/hormones" as a value added way of marketing cattle.....
 
Tex said:
Beefman said:
Tex said:
I think all these companies with factory farms have veterinarians on staff and could continue to do what they are doing if it only takes a vet. prescription to keep antibiotics in the food chain for profit in the factory farms.

Tex

Is this some quote you lifted from Wayne Pacelle, CEO of HSUS? Or was this plagiarized from Ingrid Newkirk of PETA? This is the kind of nonsense they continually spew out. It's difficult to differentiate your post from the likes of PETA, HSUS, etc. Only the most ignorant, misguided and clueless make statements such as this.

Good grief.


I never heard of any of these people, Beefman. I did actually try to call PETA about an issue once and found them so disorganized as to be quite useless in clearing up anything.

Just because you don't like what I said is no reason to call it plagiarism.

Do you have any difficulty in believing company vets will write any prescription those writing their checks will ask them to?

I have known direct evidence that there are vets who will break all kinds of rules when it comes to these companies and the companies will do the same.

You must be speaking from inexperience. That puts you closer to the categories you accuse me of plagiarizing than I could ever be. It is just something PETA members would do.

Tex

Nice try. It's difficult identifying politicians, analysts, reporters or any other person knowledgable in production agriculture who regularly uses the term "factory farm" to defend their beliefs. That term is typically reserved for use only by the most misguided leftists.
 
Beefman said:
Tex said:
Beefman said:
Is this some quote you lifted from Wayne Pacelle, CEO of HSUS? Or was this plagiarized from Ingrid Newkirk of PETA? This is the kind of nonsense they continually spew out. It's difficult to differentiate your post from the likes of PETA, HSUS, etc. Only the most ignorant, misguided and clueless make statements such as this.

Good grief.


I never heard of any of these people, Beefman. I did actually try to call PETA about an issue once and found them so disorganized as to be quite useless in clearing up anything.

Just because you don't like what I said is no reason to call it plagiarism.

Do you have any difficulty in believing company vets will write any prescription those writing their checks will ask them to?

I have known direct evidence that there are vets who will break all kinds of rules when it comes to these companies and the companies will do the same.

You must be speaking from inexperience. That puts you closer to the categories you accuse me of plagiarizing than I could ever be. It is just something PETA members would do.

Tex

Nice try. It's difficult identifying politicians, analysts, reporters or any other person knowledgable in production agriculture who regularly uses the term "factory farm" to defend their beliefs. That term is typically reserved for use only by the most misguided leftists.


So you are scared of the word "factory farm"?

Let me break it down for you because I am intimately familiar with it on many levels.

Meat packers are trying to portray their product as coming from family farmers for obvious reasons but for you I will state them. Most people do not like their food to come from some big corporate machine, they would rather think that their food comes from hard working families who produce their food as it has been done for many generations and without the corporate intrusions of efficiency that the industrialization of agriculture has brought about. They don't want to romanticize their eating experience if they think about it any at all as food that was raised on a farm, treated with family standards, and then slaughtered and presented to them at the store in a humane way. It is okay to eat and even healthy for you and you have a tradition that has gone back thousands of years that your ancestors followed.


"Factory farms" on the other hand, are industrial output of agricultural products in the most efficient and cost effective manner without regard to the above. Companies who use this system for profit use antibiotics much as they used growth hormones (that is now outlawed) to get that animal efficiency. The amortization of fixed assets is lower because more product is pushed through a given set of assets. It is stressful on the animals so they are given antibiotics to prevent diseases that travel fast through this type of intensive farming and are more prevalent due to the stress of all these animals being confined in the same area. In short, all the decisions about the animals are decisions about efficiency and profitability, not the external factors like animal well being. Animal well being is handled, in this example, with antibiotics, not more space.

Most of these animals in these situations are bred for these circumstances. They don't forage other than going to a feed pan or bunker that is always present. Usually the distance is minimal and the animal, whether pigs, cattle, or chickens, are in constant contact with their own excrement at all times. This is another reason for the antibiotics as this can be a cause for pathogens from the feces back to the upper GI tract and contamination at the the slaughter plant from the hide or skin of the animal. The animals are slaughtered in a much more efficient manner than ever with the industrial slaughter lines going faster than ever for efficiency's sake and for keeping the price down.

Did I miss anything yet, Beefman?

The production side of the factory farming model is not the only concern as the industrial production asserts its control and appetite for efficiency on the producers. Numerous games are played on these producers to steal the value of their assets from them and use them in the competition game to either increase profits or knock out other competitors who are not cheating their producers. Often this is hidden behind "efficiencies of scale" but it can and has been proven that it is plain old price discrimination for the same product.

Consumers don't like this done to family farmers so the cowboy in the hat comes out with Cargill or Monsanto sponsoring tv commercials to regain the connection they want consumers to have with real producers.

Beefman, you are either incredibly stupid or corrupt.

It is all about the money and I would assume that is what motivates you to be so biased.

Tell me it isn't true
 
Tex said:
Beefman said:
Tex said:
I never heard of any of these people, Beefman. I did actually try to call PETA about an issue once and found them so disorganized as to be quite useless in clearing up anything.

Just because you don't like what I said is no reason to call it plagiarism.

Do you have any difficulty in believing company vets will write any prescription those writing their checks will ask them to?

I have known direct evidence that there are vets who will break all kinds of rules when it comes to these companies and the companies will do the same.

You must be speaking from inexperience. That puts you closer to the categories you accuse me of plagiarizing than I could ever be. It is just something PETA members would do.

Tex

Nice try. It's difficult identifying politicians, analysts, reporters or any other person knowledgable in production agriculture who regularly uses the term "factory farm" to defend their beliefs. That term is typically reserved for use only by the most misguided leftists.


So you are scared of the word "factory farm"?

Let me break it down for you because I am intimately familiar with it on many levels.

Meat packers are trying to portray their product as coming from family farmers for obvious reasons but for you I will state them. Most people do not like their food to come from some big corporate machine, they would rather think that their food comes from hard working families who produce their food as it has been done for many generations and without the corporate intrusions of efficiency that the industrialization of agriculture has brought about. They don't want to romanticize their eating experience if they think about it any at all as food that was raised on a farm, treated with family standards, and then slaughtered and presented to them at the store in a humane way. It is okay to eat and even healthy for you and you have a tradition that has gone back thousands of years that your ancestors followed.


"Factory farms" on the other hand, are industrial output of agricultural products in the most efficient and cost effective manner without regard to the above. Companies who use this system for profit use antibiotics much as they used growth hormones (that is now outlawed) to get that animal efficiency. The amortization of fixed assets is lower because more product is pushed through a given set of assets. It is stressful on the animals so they are given antibiotics to prevent diseases that travel fast through this type of intensive farming and are more prevalent due to the stress of all these animals being confined in the same area. In short, all the decisions about the animals are decisions about efficiency and profitability, not the external factors like animal well being. Animal well being is handled, in this example, with antibiotics, not more space.

Most of these animals in these situations are bred for these circumstances. They don't forage other than going to a feed pan or bunker that is always present. Usually the distance is minimal and the animal, whether pigs, cattle, or chickens, are in constant contact with their own excrement at all times. This is another reason for the antibiotics as this can be a cause for pathogens from the feces back to the upper GI tract and contamination at the the slaughter plant from the hide or skin of the animal. The animals are slaughtered in a much more efficient manner than ever with the industrial slaughter lines going faster than ever for efficiency's sake and for keeping the price down.

Did I miss anything yet, Beefman?

The production side of the factory farming model is not the only concern as the industrial production asserts its control and appetite for efficiency on the producers. Numerous games are played on these producers to steal the value of their assets from them and use them in the competition game to either increase profits or knock out other competitors who are not cheating their producers. Often this is hidden behind "efficiencies of scale" but it can and has been proven that it is plain old price discrimination for the same product.

Consumers don't like this done to family farmers so the cowboy in the hat comes out with Cargill or Monsanto sponsoring tv commercials to regain the connection they want consumers to have with real producers.

Beefman, you are either incredibly stupid or corrupt.

It is all about the money and I would assume that is what motivates you to be so biased.

Tell me it isn't true
the guy in this video speaks more clearly, is easier to understand and has a better grasph on production ag issues than you do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYQWsebvY7A&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PL4AF17AE2C6A18E82
 
WHAT!!!! someone knows more than TEX???? impossible, he knows everything about everything!! :roll:
 

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