The scientific journal, Nature, has come out strongly in favour of
banning the sub-therapeutic use of antibiotics in farming.
It has an article about how Denmark’s hog farmers reduced the use of
antibiotics by 60 per cent after a ban on using antibiotics as a
sub-therapeutic growth promotant.
And it follows up with an editorial, headlined Pig Out, calling for
North America to follow Denmark’s example.
“The overuse of antibiotics in farm animals is a global issue,” Nature’s
editors wrote.
“Human propensity for trade and travel ensures that resistant bacteria
spread easily around the world, so as long as any one country pumps its pigs
and poultry full of the drugs, everyone is at risk.”
In the United States, the National Pork Producers Council continues to
argue for the right to continue using antibiotics as growth promotants, calling
it “judicious use”.
So far the U.S. government has agreed to continue to allow the “judicious
use” of antibiotics in farming.
This is a battle farmers are going to lose.
They ought to be scrambling for the high moral ground instead of trying to defend a practice that is risky at best and often a foolish waste of money. How many farmers, I wonder, bother to run trials to determine whether the antibiotics they are adding to feed actually yields profitable results?
And if they can't be bothered to determine whether the antibiotics are having the intended benefit, they ought not have the right to continue using them because it's a risky public-health practice.
