4 ms·

Really appreciate the calm, thoughtful, and informed devil's advocate perspective, we need more of that for meaningful discussions. > We really need to be talk

Really appreciate the calm, thoughtful, and informed devil's advocate perspective, we need more of that for meaningful discussions. > We really need to be talking about the use of antibiotics as a growth promoter I don't have fully formed views on this so I'm curious... Are your concerns about antibiotics based on a fear of reduced effectiveness of human medicines? A cursory search makes it look like significant chunk of animal antibiotics are ionophores, which are entirely different from what's used in human medicine... maybe you have a different concern? Are you ok with ionophores? Or if not, how do you propose limiting the impact of coccidiosis, which seems widely prevalent in poultry and leads to massive gut damage and animal suffering if not treated prophylactically? Your point on 'pink slime' seems to be that once you dig beyond the headlines, food regulation and safety issues are far more complicated than the bumper stickers. Not so with animal antibiotics? Or is your concern with those similarly more nuanced than most of the popular complaints?

jdietrich 8y ago
>Are your concerns about antibiotics based on a fear of reduced effectiveness of human medicines? Yes. Over 60% of the antibiotics given to livestock are medically important to humans. There's clear evidence that this is translating into increased antibiotic-resistant infections in both livestock and humans. The FDA have implemented the Veterinary Feed Directive, but these regulations are light-touch compared to the EU and have some fairly glaring loopholes. There's a legitimate debate about the use of ionophores, but medically important antibiotics are all too often used as a sticking-plaster to ameliorate the effects of poor animal husbandry. If you're keeping huge numbers of animals in cramped and unsanitary conditions, you should really fix that issue before you start routinely dumping lincomycin or penicillin into feed. The use of medically important antibiotics purely for the purposes of growth promotion is both widespread and unjustifiable. The problem is inarguably worse in the developing world (particularly Asia) but the US should really be a leader rather than a follower on this issue. The WHO have issued clear guidelines on preventing antibiotic resistance in agriculture, but the FDA have been dragging their heels on actually implementing those guidelines in an effective manner. Other countries (particularly the EU) have implemented relatively strict controls with no real impact on animal welfare and fairly marginal economic impact. Even if you doubt the strength of the evidence, the risk/reward calculus strongly points towards heavy restrictions on the use of medically important antibiotics in livestock; slightly cheaper meat is a pretty poor upside compared to the risk of an antibiotic-resistant epidemic. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(17)30141-9/fulltext?elsca1=tlxpr https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5... https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/258970/9789241550130-eng.pdf https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/258970/9789...

jdietrich 8y ago

>Are your concerns about antibiotics based on a fear of reduced effectiveness of human medicines? Yes. Over 60% of the antibiotics given to livestock are medically important to humans. There's clear evidence that this is translating into increased antibiotic-resistant infections in both livestock and humans. The FDA have implemented the Veterinary Feed Directive, but these regulations are light-touch compared to the EU and have some fairly glaring loopholes. There's a legitimate debate about the use of ionophores, but medically important antibiotics are all too often used as a sticking-plaster to ameliorate the effects of poor animal husbandry. If you're keeping huge numbers of animals in cramped and unsanitary conditions, you should really fix that issue before you start routinely dumping lincomycin or penicillin into feed. The use of medically important antibiotics purely for the purposes of growth promotion is both widespread and unjustifiable. The problem is inarguably worse in the developing world (particularly Asia) but the US should really be a leader rather than a follower on this issue. The WHO have issued clear guidelines on preventing antibiotic resistance in agriculture, but the FDA have been dragging their heels on actually implementing those guidelines in an effective manner. Other countries (particularly the EU) have implemented relatively strict controls with no real impact on animal welfare and fairly marginal economic impact. Even if you doubt the strength of the evidence, the risk/reward calculus strongly points towards heavy restrictions on the use of medically important antibiotics in livestock; slightly cheaper meat is a pretty poor upside compared to the risk of an antibiotic-resistant epidemic. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(17)30141-9/fulltext?elsca1=tlxpr https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5... https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/258970/9789241550130-eng.pdf https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/258970/9789...