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Farmers Serious About Health Concerns
Taking care of one's health is just as much of a concern to
farmers as it is to the critics who claim that livestock farms are
endangering the public's health. Remember,
it's farm families and the animals who breath the air
and drink the water first at a confined animal feeding site. If serious
health problems existed as a result of living near a confinement livestock farm,
the farm family and animals should be the first to be affected.
Common
sense tells you that if
a farmer thought the farm operation was making family members and animals sick, the
problem would be taken care of immediately.
Livestock
farmers recognize that employees who work inside enclosed confined
animal feeding barns need to take safety precautions to protect
themselves and the animals from speading potential diseases, But, there
is no conclusive, peer-reviewed research that indicates confined animal
feeding operations are a serious public health risk.
Purdue University CAFO Project - Public Health Fact Sheets
Affect of Livestock on Public Health
by Bob L. Larson, DVM, PhD, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Missouri, Columbia
Livestock pose no or very limited infectious disease risk to people who
are not in direct contact. It is inappropriate to extrapolate
infectious disease risk of animal care givers to the general
public.
In addition, the type of production system does not
change the risk for diseases that can pass from animals to humans; and
livestock are not over-represented in disease risk when compared to
companion animals and wildlife.
While it is certainly true that
there are infectious diseases that pass to humans from animals such as
pets, wildlife, and livestock, these risks are confined to humans in
direct contact with animals, or in the case of watershed contamination,
the risk is reduced from animals housed in managed environments
compared to wildlife or pastured livestock.
Read More...
Zoonotic Diseases
Zoonotic diseases are those diseases that can be passed from animals to humans.
CAFOs and Public Health: The Fate of Unabsorbed Antibiotics - Purdue University
Social Influences Affect Odor Perception
Where does odor and the role it plays in human health fit in the hog
industry puzzle? Duke University professor Susan Schiffman recently
published a report reviewing past and current research that looks at odor and health.
Consider this...
- An ammonia emissions exposure study conducted by the Missouri Department
of Health found airborne ammonia exposures near CAFO and nearby residences showed no apparent
public health hazard.
- There have been no reported outbreaks of human illness from drinking water contaminated by hog manure.
- New federal regulations clearly address land application of manure and
set new standards to help producers protect water and soil quality.
- Very few manure storage lagoons have failed in the United States.
- Properly permitted lagoons are designed to anticipate unusually heavy rain events.
Seepage rates from clay-lined lagoons are approximately equal to spooning six tablespoons of water on a square foot per day.
- By the time lagoon seepage filters to underground water supplies, it is clean.
- USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists have have found that the microbes
in manure can play an important role in breaking down antibiotics and
other pharmaceuticals excreted by treated livestock.
Antibiotis Used In Livestock Production
Antibiotic use in animal agriculture is important to protecting animal health and human health.
- Most scientists agree that overuse of antibiotics by humans is the primary cause of antibiotic resistance.
- There are three main reasons for using antibiotics in livestock
production – to treat sick animals, to reduce the spread of disease and
to improve nutritional efficiency.
- Your chance of treatment failure due to antibiotic resistance
from eating pork is 1 in 53-million. A person is more likely to be
struck by lightning, attacked by a shark, die from a bee sting or die
from a dog bite than experience antibiotic resistance from eating pork. (Download Risk Factor Chart)
- The use of any antibiotic increases a farmer’s cost of
production. Maintaining clean facilities and preventing the
introduction of disease is a top priority for all producers because
having a healthy herd provides the greatest financial return. A
producer’s first choice is always to reduce the cost of all inputs used
in production.
- Livestock farmers know that using antibiotics responsibly is
important to maintaining public trust and the ability to effectively
use animal health products.
Study finds antibiotic resistance in poultry even when antibiotics were not used
Source: 3/8/2007 for Meatingplace.com
A surprising finding by a team of University of Georgia scientists
suggests that curbing the use of antibiotics on poultry farms will do
little, if anything, to reduce rates of antibiotic-resistant bacteria
that have the potential to threaten human health.
Dr. Margie Lee, professor in the UGA College of Veterinary Medicine,
and her colleagues have found that chickens raised on antibiotic-free
farms, and even those raised under pristine laboratory conditions, have
high levels of bacteria that are resistant to common antibiotics. Her
findings, published in the March issue of the journal Applied and
Environmental Microbiology, suggest that poultry come to the farm
harboring resistant bacteria, possibly acquired as they were developing
in their eggs.
"The resistances don't necessarily come from antibiotic use in the
birds that we eat," Lee said, "so banning antibiotic use on the farm
isn't going to help. You have to put in some work before that."
Lee and her team sampled droppings from more than 140,000 birds under four different conditions:
1. commercial flocks that had been given antibiotics;
2. commercial flocks that had not been given antibiotics;
3. flocks raised in a lab that had been given antibiotics;
4. flocks raised in a lab that had not been given antibiotics.
The researchers examined levels of antibiotic resistance in normal
intestinal bacteria that do not cause human illness and, in a companion
study published in May in the same journal, also examined levels of
drug-resistant campylobacter bacteria, a common foodborne cause of
diarrhea, cramping and abdominal pain.
Two
scientific reports indicate eliminating antimicrobials from food animal
production may have little impact on resistant bacteria of concern to
human health
Source: Animal Agriculture Alliance, March 28, 2007
Antimicrobials
are integral to food production and manufacturing, providing for good
physical condition of crops, good health of food animals, and
maintaining sanitation during food processing," said Michael Doyle,
PhD, at the Animal Agriculture Alliance's sixth industry-wide
Stakeholders Summit held March 19-21 in Arlington, Virginia.
"Antimicrobials are important to reduce and control foodborne pathogens
in food animals and in their further processing."
Doyle, a professor at the University of Georgia and leader of an
Institute of Food Technologists team of experts studying antimicrobial
resistance, noted that 95% of antibiotic use in agriculture is for
therapeutic treatment of disease or control of pathogens. He also said
that antibiotic-resistant intestinal bacteria may be present in food
animals, regardless of the animals‚ exposure to an antibiotic.
Further Doyle indicated that when the European Union (EU) eliminated
in-feed antibiotics, it likely resulted in increased intestinal disease
in animals, causing therapeutic antibiotic use to rise which then
triggered an increase in resistant microbes in EU nations. Doyle noted
that some types of antimicrobial resistance in S. Typhimurium, C.
jejuni, and E. coli have increased in Europe since the ban was
instituted.
"Sweeping risk management measures that are proposed for a certain
classification of use, such as growth promotion, can be draconian and
without predictable results," warned Doyle after referring to the
results of the EU experience. Doyle also
noted that there is no notable difference in microbial resistance from
animals raised in confined animal feeding operations when compared to
animals from other systems used for growing food animals.
The findings of Dr. Doyle and the IFT panel of experts indicate that it
is time for the inaccurate urban legend of antimicrobial resistance
being caused by conventional animal feeding operations to end," said
Alliance Executive Vice President, Kay Johnson. "This summer the IFT
report indicated that eliminating antimicrobials from food animal
production may have little positive impact on resistant bacteria of
concern to human health. Then, just a couple weeks ago, a team of
scientists at the University of Georgia found that antibiotic
resistance doesn‚t necessarily stem from antibiotic use."
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