Panorama tonight (23/05) Antibiotic Crisis

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Panorama tonight (23/05) Antibiotic Crisis
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Rob R

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 31902
Location: York

Posted: Mon May 30, 16 11:03 pm Post subject:

Tavascarow wrote:

Sustainability also has to take account of climate impact. The same number of ruminants will still be producing large quantities of methane.
Every industry is having to make concessions & changes. Farming should get some breaks because of food security but it still need to make changes.

Getting back to antibiotic resistance.
With higher producing cows & greater stresses in their lives mastitis incidence has increased.
I know there's a withdrawl period but I'm sure I read somewhere antibiotics are being found in milk samples increasingly.
Pasteurisation should deal with the majority I imagine as will cooking with meat.
But an area of concern.
Treating animals like factories is never going to work.

Your points are conflicting. Higher producing cows reduces their methane output and has allowed us to produce more with fewer animals.

However, the GHG emissions from livestock have largely been quoted as the overblown estimates and inconsistent calculations from Livestock's Long Shadow. Although we've increased the number of domestic ruminants on the planet, most figures do not take account of wild ruminants. It's a huge and very well presented smokescreen to take the heat off the fossil fuel industry, for which the cultivated landscape relies heavily upon.

Animals don't create or destroy carbon, it's either coming from the atmosphere, soil or fossil fuels. If you're building soils (regen ag) and using only organic growing methods you must be taking the carbon from the atmosphere and putting it into the soil. Given the loss of carbon from our soils, mainly through drainage and cultivation, it's a travesty that animals cop the blame while soil and fossil carbon is ignored. On the plus side our depleted soils represent huge potential for potential carbon storage.

As far as antibiotics in milk goes things have never been better. Back in my family's days of producing milk it took several days to detect antibiotics in the lab and your money was docked if you were found to be over. Now they test the milk before it even goes onto the tanker and refuse to take it if it's over the minimum.

Tavascarow

Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Posts: 8407
Location: South Cornwall

Posted: Tue May 31, 16 11:43 am Post subject:

Rob R wrote:

I know there's research that says corn fed intensive cattle give off less emisions than extensive grass reared but I don't think it takes into account of emmisions from growing their food or the emmisions from their waste management.

You have quoted that wild ruminants aren't being considered but wild ruminant numbers are small due to habitat loss & hunting.
The days of bison as far as the eye can see are long gone.

It's twenty years since I had anything to do with dairy so know little of current rules & practise.
I assume they test each tanker before discharge at the factory as well?
I've been buying organic milk for a couple of years. Antibiotic use on organic dairy farms are a lot more stringent.

Edited to say less not more. It was a long night.

Rob R

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 31902
Location: York

Posted: Tue May 31, 16 8:34 pm Post subject:

Maybe it's different in Yorkshire but I've never known anyone to overuse antibiotics in dairying, most are scared stiff of getting any money docked in fines and having the cost of the antibiotics in the first place. The bigger problem with the bigger dairies is staff who mess up and let antibiotic milk go in the tank and not own up to it.

When I talk about wild ruminants that's exactly what I mean - there used to be loads, and now there are few, so the difference has been made up for by cattle. Instead of measuring just the output of modern cattle, we should be measuring the difference between that and methane produced by the former vast herds of ruminants. And measure we should be doing, relying on estimates doesn't account for basic maths and the rule that you can't destroy or create carbon - all emissions come, originally, from fossil reserves, soils or the atmosphere. We just need to ensure that we're taking as little as possible from the former and taking as much as possible from the latter, and putting a bit back into the soil.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46207
Location: yes

Posted: Tue May 31, 16 11:28 pm Post subject:

if i understand the situation correctly most agricultural antibiotic use is either on a treat a problem basis which seems reasonable or in some intensive systems ab's are part of the routine to prevent problems which is perhaps less reasonable on several grounds not least of which anything less than a 100%kill is a recipe for resistant bugs and doing this on a mass scale in millions of units and billions of birds,pigs etc there are many chances for a less than total wipeout.

direct selection in humans is a factor but in medicine say out of 50000 ,500 folk get a "curative "dose of antibiotics in a week and only a say 50 underdose but in a broiler shed all 50000 test beds get dosed(or underdosed as a "preventative")
tis a numbers game and the numbers are on the bugs side in industrial agricultural systematic antibiotic use.

Tavascarow

Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Posts: 8407
Location: South Cornwall

Posted: Wed Jun 01, 16 8:21 am Post subject:

Rob R wrote:

The wild ruminants have also been replaced by the industrial revolution. Not just cattle. All aspects of industry including farming need to make concessions or changes to have a hope of containing carbon.
Farming should get some breaks for food security reasons. But there are many areas that are currently unsustainable, environmentally damaging & in most instances keeps others in profit more than that of the farmers.
I'm not anti farming I'm anti industrial intensive farming.
There's plenty of evidence that my fears are justified.
Antibiotic resistant bugs being one of them.

Tavascarow

Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Posts: 8407
Location: South Cornwall

Posted: Wed Jun 01, 16 8:27 am Post subject:

dpack wrote:

I wasn't saying dairy farmers use antibiotics indiscriminately.
But higher producing cows & more stressful intensive management systems probably means mastitis incidence is higher.
I agree the routine use in the pig & poultry industry are the main areas of concern.

Rob R

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 31902
Location: York

Posted: Thu Jun 02, 16 11:53 am Post subject:

Tavascarow wrote:

Rob R wrote:

And I'm not against the concept of eating less "meat", providing it isn't to the deteriment of the environment and animals, as the current message is. The Chatham House report is one such example of a dumbed down message because they think the public can't handle the truth (they state that in the report itself). The danger of sending simple messages about complex problems is that the public think the problem is simple.

Simple messages bring about change, but it has to be the right change or all we end up with is less of the intensively-farmed meat rather than less-intensively farmed meat, and more intensively-farmed veg.

Tavascarow

Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Posts: 8407
Location: South Cornwall

Posted: Fri Jun 03, 16 9:40 pm Post subject:
& then there's the other side of the debate. The fact modern life has become very sterile. How many inner city kids get to play in the soil? How many work surfaces get sprayed with antibacterials every day? How many patients being prescribed antibiotics would need them if they "cultured" their own resistance instead? Don't wash your hands!

Rob R

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 31902
Location: York

Posted: Fri Jun 03, 16 9:46 pm Post subject:
Human growth promoters.

Rob R

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 31902
Location: York

Posted: Sun Jun 05, 16 9:29 pm Post subject:

Tavascarow wrote:

Nick wrote:

But selling a handful of steaks when it's sunny is not the way to approach that. That's the way to spend a fortune setting up a business and then blaming everyone else when you've two staff burning cash on a rainy bank holiday weekend.

If you've a freezer full of chops & sausages you don't need to employ someone to sell them.
How often do farmers take a day off? There's nearly always someone at home.

Today I was working 50 yards up the yard loading hurdles into a trailer and someone left a message because there was 'noone around'. Being at home is not enough on a farm, people are expecting the kind of service they get in s shop.

Hairyloon

Joined: 20 Nov 2008
Posts: 15425
Location: Today I are mostly being in Yorkshire.

Posted: Sun Jun 05, 16 9:34 pm Post subject:

Rob R wrote:

That's not entirely fair. Is 50 yards out of sight and earshot?
Meaning could they see or hear you from, for want of a better word I will call your shop-front?
People who don't know can reasonably believe that farms are hazardous places that they ought not be wandering about on: unless you have left some clues as to what a customer should do, then you have to expect them to be clueless.

Rob R

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 31902
Location: York

Posted: Sun Jun 05, 16 10:00 pm Post subject:

Hairyloon wrote:

Rob R wrote:

The note attached to the door said to ring the mobile, but they rang the landline. It doesn't really matter though, but just illustrates the point that being at home on a farm is not the same as being ready to serve customers. Especially when you consider that being 'at home's can be a 30 minute walk/drive away.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46207
Location: yes

Posted: Mon Jun 06, 16 9:21 am Post subject:

on a back to the plot theme i woke up thinking that "agricultural"antibiotic use and the potential for selecting bugs for resistance in "farm animals" is perhaps missing a major factor in that "farm animals" in this context should include intensively farmed prawns which require antibiotics in the feed to thrive in the ponds.
as the water is changed any antibiotics not absorbed by the prawns or denatured in the water/food flakes will become diluted in the "run off"liquor which provides the perfect conditions for underdosing any bugs and selecting for resistance in the local environment.

there have been issues raised re antibiotic residues in such prawns but perhaps the above is a far greater problem.

Rob R

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 31902
Location: York

Posted: Mon Jun 06, 16 10:49 am Post subject:

dpack wrote:

there have been issues raised re antibiotic residues in such prawns but perhaps the above is a far greater problem.

Good point. Well put.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46207
Location: yes

Posted: Mon Jun 06, 16 12:03 pm Post subject:

a quick google indicates that fish farms are also using antibiotics (and various other biocides) as normal practice to protect their stock) which will have similar issues to prawns.

the dilution factor in an aquatic system is perhaps an aspect that has been under assessed for the effect on resistance,it is a small step from tolerance to resistance in a bacterial species and dilute challenges are far more effective selection tools than concentrated ones.

a few places have banned such methods but the reasoning seems to have been based on the potential harm of residues in the fish and environmental damage to the area where the fish farm is located rather than on resistant bugs.

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