Dr. Scott Hurd of Perdue University says the public has no
reason to be concerned about the on-farm use of antibiotics as feed additives
for chickens, hogs and cattle.
He says regular checking by federal government inspectors
indicates that antibiotic residues in meats are rare; in fact, in poultry none
have been detected in the last three years.
He says farmers are doing an excellent job of adhering to
withdrawal times before they market their birds and livestock.
But residues are far from the major concern. The biggest
concern is that the use of antibiotics as feed additives to improve feed
efficiency and growth rates also greatly increases the presence of bacteria
able to resist the antibiotics.
Once they develop that resistance, they can pass it to other
bacteria, even without antibiotics being in the environment.
They can also pass along resistance to multiple bacteria.
The risk is that harmful bacteria, ones that give rise to
life-threatening infections and illnesses, could pick up this antibiotic
resistance and doctors would be severely limited in the medicines they can use
to rescue patients.
Hurd made no comment about antibiotic resistance in his
column.
I call this dissembling, which is misleading people while
telling nothing but the truth.
Hurd’s column will probably leave a lot of
farmers thinking there are no risks to continuing to use antibiotics as growth
promotants.
