MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
US to faze out use of antibiotics in animals for meat as resistant diseases keep rising
Citing a potential threat to public health, the United States Food and Drug Administration is taking steps toward phasing out the use of some antibiotics in animals processed for meat. In the US many cattle, hog and poultry producers give their animals antibiotics regularly to ensure that they are healthy and to make the animals grow faster. Read full article
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Disclaimer & comment rulesThe use of ALL artificial animal growth enhances should be prohibited.. Of course that's no reason not to treat sick animals with antibiotics and indeed as farmers we have a duty to keep our stock healthy
Dec 13th, 2013 - 01:34 pm - Link - Report abuse 0I think in USA,the growth hormone Zeranol is still legal, in spite of this drug having a consequence of increased breast cancer in women who eat beef so treated.Here in Uruguay its use has been banned for over a decade
We have to keep a register of all treatments we give our cattle, whether anti helmentic or otherwise.
As all 12 million catle are tagged electronically, it's fairly easy to discover at slaughter analysis if someone has broken the rules
Our selling slogan on the international markets is “Uruguay Natural” and it is trusted
For this reason, Uruguayan beef commands a premium on the usual international price
On an allied subject, cattle are ruminants by nature. If you start feeding them with half cooked sheeps brains you are asking for trouble as evidenced by the outbreaks of BSE and it's subsequent transmission to humans
@ 1 redp0ll
Dec 13th, 2013 - 02:57 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Excellent post.
And we all know why the sheep’s brains were “hal-cooked” don’t we? The UK processors wanted to “improve” their fuel efficiency and convinced the forerunner of DEFRA to allow the process temperatures to be reduced.
No testing, no real discussion and now the UK are really in it.
2 ChrisR
Dec 13th, 2013 - 03:25 pm - Link - Report abuse 0You say“ And we all know why the sheep’s brains were “hal-cooked” don’t we?”
Thank you for sharing your personal life experiences.
@3 Marcos, do you always have to reduce a discussion to personal vituperation?
Dec 13th, 2013 - 03:48 pm - Link - Report abuse 0A bit childish may I suggest?
@2 Chris, I have crossed swords with Depra on various occasions.
Their attitude is Kill it!
There is a perfectly good vaccine against FMD which they refuse to sanction and prefer the stench of burning carcasses to the ruin of some hard working livelihood who just happened to be near an outbreak which could have been easily controlled and prevented
Now there is a campaign against badgers which transmit TB to cattle, so kill them all
It shouldn't be beyond them to catch most of those animals up and vaccinate them. The ones they miss are going to die of TB anyway and so won't breed anyway
@ 4 redp0ll
Dec 13th, 2013 - 07:40 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Ahhh! I see where you are going wrong! :o)
They relied on a “computer model” to predict where the outbreaks would be AND how far the danger zone would be accordingly. ONLY ONE PROBLEM (which they admitted to later) the idiots doing the model had NO IDEA what they were doing.
But of course to the computer illiterate people of DEFRA having a computer model was great! Morons or what?
Fortunately the farm on which I was the vermin rifle, almost 1,000 acres in Cheshire with 300 or so head and followers of pedigree Holsteins plus 625,000 chickens in the Dutch stilt system had never bought any calves for bringing on and raised all their food on the farm so they avoided F&M as well as “mad cow”.
Other farmers that I know were not so lucky. Terrible, terrible disease (F&M) all brought about by the lack of border controls on food coming into the country.
BTW the badger cull has been abandoned due to the “expert marksmen” not being able to shoot enough badgers. They were selected by DEFRA as well so it doesn’t surprise me. I used to hate seeing the wasted corpses of badgers that had died of BTB at the side of the roads.
First Chris, FMD has never killed anybody.
Dec 13th, 2013 - 09:50 pm - Link - Report abuse 0FMD virus doesn't respect frontiers. The last outbreak probably came from Mauretania in the Sahel. Blown out to sea, wind direction reversed and deposited the virus in UK from there.
It would have been a damn sight cheaper to give the vaccine free to the Sahel cattlemen. B
DEFRA people are mainly townie nerds who haven't a clue about how farming works.
We here in Uruguay are fortunate to have a Minister of Agriculture who is not only a farmer but fairly bright and non aligned to any particular faction of the present government
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