From: "Steve Harris" <sbharris@ix.RETICULATEDOBJECTcom.com>
Newsgroups: sci.med.nutrition,sci.med
Subject: Re: Bill Would Ban Most Antibiotic Use in Farm Animals
Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2002 09:10:55 -0800
Message-ID: <a5loih$qcu$1@slb4.atl.mindspring.net>

De Math wrote in message
<57475792.0202280504.78ebf6e5@posting.google.com>...
>WASHINGTON (Reuters Health) - Most "nontherapeutic" use in livestock
>of antibiotics commonly prescribed to humans would be banned under a
>bill introduced by US House Democrats Wednesday.
>
>The "Preservation of Antibiotics for Human Treatment Act of 2002"
>would phase out over 2 years the use of eight classes of drugs now
>commonly employed to promote growth and development in farm animals.


COMMENT:

Yeah!  This should've been done decades ago, and is only testament to the
power of the ag/farm lobby that it wasn't. We control narcotics as public
health menaces, when the real menaces, and the ones hardest to get away
from, are antibiotics!  We should control narcotics as we do now
antibiotics, and vice versa!  Wouldn't it be cool if we just told the DEA
that their entire enforcement schedule now consisted of things like cipro
and azithromycin <g>.

>The banned drugs, which include penicillin, tetracycline and other
>popular human medicines, could still be used to treat sick animals,
>and could continue to be used for nontherapeutic purposes if
>drugmakers can demonstrate to the US Food and Drug Administration
>(news - web sites) that use of the product does not contribute to the
>development of drug-resistant strains of bacteria.

And if the sun fails to rise in the morning <g>.  I'm happy with this
clause.

>The bill would also ban all uses of fluoroquinolones, the class of
>drugs that includes the now-famous antibiotic Cipro, in poultry.
>Several poultry manufacturers have already voluntarily curtailed their
>use of such drugs, which have been linked to resistant strains of
>bacteria that cause food poisoning.


Which again was a travesty just waiting to happen as sure as sun DOES rise.
Fluoroquinolones contain fluorine and are naturally quite resistant to
normal environmental breakdown. They stay in water supplies supplies
forever, along with Prozac...

Kudos to lawmakers.  But it's a shame to be praising them for merely
stopping a piece of manifest idiocy that has been doing on for longer than
most of them have been in office.

BTW, along with the public health aspects, this has some other good features
as well. It's only antibiotic use which allows caging of animals in some of
the closest and dirtiest conditions. If you can't use antibiotics routinely
in poultry, it will mean a move to larger cages and less misery to the
animals. I don't really object to killing and eating animals (they don't
know what's coming), but the conditions they're kept in before that, has
always bothered me. I buy free range eggs and poultry myself, but most
people don't. If they could see an average chicken farm, they probably
would. In any case, this will give producers the legal power to go in this
direction without getting undersold. The increase in price of eggs and
poultry, if I can judge by the cost of the free range stuff I now buy, will
be very modest.

SBH