10-25 IAN Anti Antibiotics

Antibiotic controversy again? Doesn't the media love to jump all over stories that put animal agriculture under the microscope in a negative way. A couple of weeks ago there was a story about antibiotics being used in dairy cattle and also in beef cattle. I called Executive Director of the Idaho Cattlemen's Association, Wyatt Prescott for a refreshing perspective. "When producers use antibiotics it is usually for a reason. It is no different than when your children would get sick. You want to take them to a doctor and get the proper antibiotics to take care of whatever illness or problems they may have. Same thing with cattle. We try to use the antibiotics in a judicious manner in order to get those cattle healthy again. Unfortunately what we found in the incident a couple of weeks ago was there was a missing use of those drugs and you hear a lot about that in the media. This is a case in point where that mis-use was caught through the safeguards put into place to ensure that those cattle that that happens on never reach the food chain. The process that we have established and set in place caught those animals. If anything I think that should be a positive as to how the system is working in terms of keeping incidents like that out of our food supply.