Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Extra-label Use of Cephalosporin & Ceftiofur - Dairy Disease Managment

·         Nearly 80 percent of producers do not have written treatment protocols.
·         Half of dairies do not always keep written treatment records.
·         More than 20 percent of producers administer extra-label medication without always having written orders or guidelines from their veterinarian.


Dr. Michael Apley, Veterinarian at Kansas State University who focused concerns about antibiotic resistance and residues in culled dairy cows and veal calves and what can be done to get rid of them.

“One of the unique things about dairy cattle is a lot of treatment in a sick dairy cow happens immediately before her being culled from the herd,” he said, noting that having veterinarians involved can be very helpful to dairy producers, especially in terms of making sure all procedures comply with current laws.

FSIS RESIDUE VIOLATION INFORMATION SYSTEM


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Monday, February 13, 2012

Ractopamine Contamination - Global Beef & Paylean

Beef growers to burn U.S. flags in protest: The Taiwan Beef Industry Progress Association plans to burn American flags and portraits of U.S. President Barack Obama in the demonstration scheduled for later this month in Taipei, said Tseng Chin-jui on behalf of association director Liu San-he. 
The association firmly opposes any policy that will allow the use of the controversial leanness-enhancing drug, called ractopamine, in meat. 
U.S. beef ribs ordered off shelves over ractopamine contamination


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Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Ractopamine Hydrochloride - Paylean Pays (who?)

The drug, ractopamine hydrochloride, is fed to pigs and other animals right up until slaughter and minute traces have been found in meat.

Only one human study was used in the safety assessment by Elanco, and among the six healthy young men who participated, one was removed because his heart began racing and pounding abnormally.

Although few Americans outside of the livestock industry have ever heard of ractopamine, the feed additive is controversial. Fed to an estimated 60 to 80 percent of pigs in the United States, it has sickened or killed more of them than any other livestock drug on the market, an investigation of Food and Drug Administration records shows. Cattle and turkeys have also suffered high numbers of illnesses from the drug.


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Shocking Levels of Antibiotic Abuse on Factory Farms

A MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) bacteria strain is seen in a petri dish: Less than a century after the discovery of penicillin, one of the most powerful miracle weapons ever produced by modern medicine threatens to become ineffective.
Stadium-size warehouses shoehorn 100,000 sows into claustrophobic cages that hold them in one position for a lifetime over metal-grate floors. Below, aluminum culverts collect and channel their putrefying waste into 10-acre, open-air pits three stories deep from which miasmal vapors choke surrounding communities and tens of millions of gallons of hog feces ooze into North Carolina’s rivers.The slum conditions on factory farms are breeding grounds for disease.

Maintaining Animal Health via antimicrobials and antibiotics