If use of antibiotics is normal in husbandry, something is wrong

Recently, I was asked to speak to a society with an anagram for its name. I don’t know what the letters stood for, so I won’t quote them here, which gives the society some anonymity. I was told the first two letters stood for prostrate removal, but I think they were winding me up.

The chairman introduced me by saying the title of my talk was “Chewing on a piece of straw”, which was news to me. I told them I was to talk about humour and the part it played in my life, as I’ve always used humour as the vehicle to carry important messages.

When I turned up, I thought, because it was a morning meeting, it would be followed by a free lunch. But it wasn’t, which was disappointing, more than I first thought because my wife also thought I would be out for lunch as well. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but when I turned up, 40 to 50, possibly retired, men were there. The two I knew were retired teachers, but the impression I got was they came from all walks of life. So, we had one old boy talking to many other old boys.

Anyway, I gave them about 40 minutes on farming, of which I know a bit; writing, of which I do a bit; and the countryside and nature, of which I am learning about all the time, followed by questions.

I like answering questions – you never know what to expect and it puts you on your mettle. We get the usual questions: stuff about TB and badgers, and the role of predators that get numerically out of balance. I’d touched on those subjects, so they were predictable questions.

Antibiotics in feed

Then we get the bombshell question. I can quote it accurately because the person who asked it wrote to me afterwards about it. This is how he asked it: “What is your view on the routine use of antibiotics in animal feed?”

We had been talking about dairy cows, so I assumed that is what he referred to. I told the meeting I had never fed antibiotics to dairy cows. Even more concerning – from the reaction of the audience – was I am not sure they believed me.

The questioner’s concern was antibiotic resistance and human health.

It is obviously a concern I have and I am sure I have said previously in Veterinary Times, if antibiotics have to be used as a norm in animal husbandry then there is something fundamentally wrong with the husbandry.

I think I quoted dry cow therapy as an example and, instead of blanket treatment of a herd, treatment should be targeted towards individual cows that need it. Nevertheless, I still got the very clear impression my audience thought dairy cows were fed antibiotics as routine.

At the meeting I suggested this impression was, in part, created by endless letters in the press from vegans who perpetuate this myth at every opportunity. If my audience represented the cross section of “all walks of life” I referred to, then clearly there is a big educational issue here. As you can imagine, I have given this a lot of thought.

Ultimately, the amount of antibiotics used in agriculture is in the gift of the vets. I know farmers can put pressure on to use antibiotics, but it is still up to the vet. The farmer can’t go to a veterinary supermarket and fill his or her trolley with the antibiotics he or she chooses, plus any others that might be on offer.

Stocking up in Ireland

I know of dairy farmers who used to go off for a nice week in Ireland – is there any other sort of week in Ireland? – and fill their car boots with antibiotics, especially dry cow tubes, before they came home. They reckoned the money they saved would pay for the week’s holiday.

I’ve not heard of that happening for years and I never did it. If you took the practice to its inevitable conclusion, you would end up telephoning an Irish vet in the middle of the night to come to a difficult calving.

On a similar theme, I suspect GPs are put under pressure to prescribe antibiotics to their patients everyday, possibly when they won’t affect the condition. As far as I can remember, the only time I gave dairy cows medicated food was for ringworm. I bought a cow that had a small patch of ringworm on its nose and, in no time, most of the herd had ringworm. I treated the herd with something I put in their feed.

That was probably 30 years ago; I can’t recall if it was very expensive. Anyway, it is probably banned by now.

I can’t think of a condition where you would treat cattle by putting antibiotics in their food. They probably do it in the US, where it is possibly used as a growth promoter. I know antibiotics are used to treat intensive poultry flocks, but even then it is less than 10 years ago.

I told my audience there is no way I could feed antibiotics to my cows because a milk sample is taken at every collection and retained; so, should the lorry or silo subsequently fail, the fault and cost is very quickly returned to the farmer.

Being taken to task

I know of a lady living not far from me who has only been in the area for a few years. She often takes me to task about being a dairy farmer, saying: “It’s cruel. The cows are kept in dark sheds all year round, never go out to grass and are fed antibiotics every day to keep them alive.”

The irony of this is, when she was looking for a house in the area, she stayed here for bed and breakfast several times; there is no way she couldn’t see the cows out in the fields and there is no way she doesn’t see them when she drives past.

You can’t educate people like that – they seem to get some sort of comfort from a perceived wrong. Best to ignore them and move on.