Report: Ban Some Uses of Antibiotics, Stop Some Kinds of Confinement

By Ron Johnson Dairy Editor
Thursday, November 27, 2008 8:39 PM CST

Should certain uses of antibiotics be banned from livestock production? Should some kinds of animal confinement be stopped?

Those questions were presented to dairy farmers and others at the recent Dairy Policy Summit of the Professional Dairy Producers of Wisconsin (PDPW). The gathering at Manitowoc brought in two people who were involved in putting together a report that recommends changing the way livestock are raised on U.S. farms.

Robert Martin, executive director of the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production (PCIFAP), and Michael Blackwell, president and chief executive officer of Blackwell Consulting and a Pew Commission member, told the PDPW gathering about some of the recommendations in the report, titled “Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America.”

The report, Blackwell and Martin explained, is a project of the Pew Charitable Trust and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Among the members of the PCIFAP commission that formed the report’s recommendations are two cattle ranchers, former Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman, a South Dakota state senator, a former governor of Kansas, and several university professors.

One of the “key recommendations” in the report is to “eliminate non-therapeutic uses of antibiotics.” Another one is to “phase out intensive confinement.” Those two were the focus of most of Martin’s and Blackwell’s presentation.

They made a point of telling the PDPW audience that dairy farmers and beef farmers generate the fewest problems when it comes to antibiotics. Blackwell praised dairy and beef farmers in general for their “forward-thinking, problem-solving attitude.” He added that it’s not an attitude that’s usually found among poultry and hog producers.

Blackwell went on to praise the owners of the pair of dairy farms PDPW policy summit attendees toured earlier in the day. He called Pagel’s Ponderosa Dairy, Kewaunee, and Gold Star Farms, New Holstein, “very well run.”

But many operations in the hog and poultry industries use “consistent low levels of antibiotics in their feed” to promote growth, improve the animals’ feed conversion efficiency, or to prevent diseases, Blackwell said. Those and other uses of antibiotics threaten public health, because some bacteria are evolving to become resistant to antibiotics, according to the report. That resistance makes the medicines less effective in treating people.

Antibiotics should be used on farms to treat livestock that have been diagnosed with diseases caused by bacteria, the report says. Another legitimate use, it says, is to protect healthy stock that have been exposed to bacterial diseases or before they are expected to be exposed.

In addition, the Pew report suggests better monitoring and reporting of the amounts and kinds of antibiotics used on farms. It also wants better monitoring of antibiotics in “the food supply, the environment, and animal and human populations.” A third measure dealing with antibiotics, says the report, is to “increase veterinary oversight and implement disease monitoring to achieve 48-hour trace-back.”

Confinement

Under the heading of “animal welfare,” the report calls for phasing out the use of “intensive confinement.” It uses the examples of battery cages for laying hens and gestation crates for sows.

The report goes on to recommend implementing at the federal level performance standards for farms when it comes to animal well-being. And, it suggests using “better” animal husbandry practices, “improving animal welfare practices and conditions” and improving “animal welfare research.”

Another aspect of the report deals with better regulating “industrial farm animal production.” The report uses the term “IFAP” to identify farms that manage livestock this way.

Recommendations here include “fully” enforcing federal and state environmental regulations and conducting more research on the health impacts of people “living and working on or near these operations.” Another recommendation is to build a stronger relationship among medical doctors, veterinarians and public health professionals. Further, the report advocates creating a “Food Safety Administration.”

Yet another recommendation is to “implement zoning and siting guidance for new IFAPs.” The report also suggests that the U.S. needs to adopt policies that “allow for a competitive marketplace.”

More funding

More money devoted to “expand and reform animal agriculture research” can help, according to Martin, Blackwell and the report. “Science can solve many of the problems of IFAPs if enough money is allocated,” the report states.

CAFOs

“Confined animal feeding operations,” or CAFOs, as they’re often called, “are likely to be in our future,” the report goes on. Blackwell pointed out that modern animal agriculture has “evolved on cheap fossil fuel.” With the U.S. population expected to reach 400 million by 2040, these types of farms will be necessary, he added.

Martin said one key question is, “How are we going to feed 400 million people in a sustainable way?” For one, he said, the nation needs to stop the loss of farmland.

Overall, “We need a national dialog on how we raise food,” Martin stated.

Blackwell gave dairying a verbal pat on the back for its efforts at self-regulation. He said, “This industry gets it.”

Still, he warned that even though dairy producers in general manage their livestock well, “All of animal agriculture will be viewed the same. Dairy will not be separated.”

The Pew Commission’s report on industrial farm animal production was released this past April. Blackwell said it has been sent to the attorney general, the USDA, land grant universities, every senator and representative in Congress, and every state governor.

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