Tail docking and antibiotics under fire in California
When proposition 2 passed in California, new housing restrictions were placed on egg-laying hens, veal calves and pregnant sows. Just last month, California Senate Majority Leader Dean Florez introduced a bill that would outlaw tail docking. The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) opposed proposition 2 but does not stand behind tail docking.
Just today, we learned of the Majority Leader’s plan to prohibit schools from serving meat or poultry products from animals treated with antibiotics. The bill would also place a ban on antibiotics for non-therapeutic and prophylactic uses. Finally, the bill would require state and local governments, when purchasing meat supplies, to prefer meat supplies produced without the use of medically important antibiotics as feed additives. See the .pdf link below to view the bill.
SB416.pdf
One thing is for certain; farmers and animal agriculture advocates across the country should be ready to educate the public on the measures we take to be good animal caretakers. Comment below to share your thoughts.
Labels: animal welfare, antibiotics, California, tail docking
posted by Hoard's Dairyman at
3:39 PM
1 Comments:
I personally believe in using as few antibiotics as possible. But I'm not going to let the animal suffer because of this. However we can't keep loading down our animals with "supportive" drugs, in an effort to keep them alive for our personal gain. How is this being a good steward to the animals we care for?
I agree we are to be good animal caretakers, but we are however also feeding the people. Do we not also need to be thinking of what is best for them? What if it's true that the use of these drugs and supportive’s (not including the inject able vitamins) are indeed hurting the very consumers we are trying to educate that it's all OK? Then what? Will the farmer be liable?
In this day and age of the sue happy consumer flooding our judicial system with claims of wrong doing. How soon do you think that some consumer group is going to file a suit against a Co-Op of farmers? Yes it would be unfounded more than likely on the part of the big consumer group going after the little Co-Op but still the possibility is there. Could this lead to the farmers being able to file a suit against the companies who sold them the drugs and supportive that we believed were OK? Yes this may be extreme… OK very extreme. But there just might be a tiny glimmer of truth in it.
I think we can all agree that if our animals are well cared for, fed the proper diet (meaning vitamins and minerals and so forth and so on in what ever form you choose) and tenderly loved with the occasional screaming and yelling when they decide to go AWOL, that we truly have very little need for the use of antibiotics and other things.
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