Suggested Complete Elimination of Antibiotics from Livestock Production Raises Animal Welfare Concerns

By Bruce Cochrane.

A Saskatchewan based veterinary epidemiologist warns the complete elimination of antibiotics from livestock production would create a serious animal welfare issue.

The level of public interest and concern over antibiotic resistance has increased dramatically over the past couple of years fuelled by reports on the issue from the World Health Organization, the Center for Disease Control, the White House and Canada's Auditor General as well as an increase in the promotion by food retailers of products raised without antibiotics.

Dr. Leigh Rosengren, an epidemiologist with Rosengren Epidemiology Consulting, says livestock producers have dramatically reduced their use of antibiotics but suggestions that they be prohibited from using antibiotics is a major animal welfare concern.

Dr. Leigh Rosengren-Rosengren Epidemiology Consulting:
It is our responsibility as producers to take care of our animals or our birds when they get sick so the idea of completely eliminating antibiotics is irrational because we need to be able to treat animals when they get ill.

Even in an antibiotic-free production stream the producer has the opportunity to treat the animals when they get sick and then market those animals under a conventional stream.
So producers and veterinarians, it is absolutely imperative for us to do our job and to really look after our stock, to be able to treat them.

That's a message consumers really need to understand, is that sick animals need medicine every bit as much as sick people do.

Dr. Rosengren says consumers need to understand that all meat in Canada, including eggs and dairy, is antibiotic free in the sense that none of it contains antibiotics, whether it's raised conventionally or raised under an antibiotic production scheme.

She says producers are very good at observing withdrawal times between the time that an animal is treated and the time it goes to slaughter and so there's no antibiotics in the meat.

Source: Farmscape