FDA approval of cefquinome, a 4th generation cephalosporin, a class of antibiootics used as a last ditch against human infections, is about to be approved for use in cattle despite warnings from the American Medical Association.
Story in the Washington Post. By Rick Weiss
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Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University. He was a Western Watersheds Project Board Member off and on for many years, and was also its President for several years. For a long time he produced Ralph Maughan’s Wolf Report. He was a founder of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. He and Jackie Johnson Maughan wrote three editions of “Hiking Idaho.” He also wrote “Beyond the Tetons” and “Backpacking Wyoming’s Teton and Washakie Wilderness.” He created and is the administrator of The Wildlife News.
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The penchant for eating beef at any cost to the environment may be the death of us all — breeding super-bugs, and leaving humans with, ultimately, no way to cure infections in ourselves.
And of course, these chemicals and breakdown products will end up in water. Resistant diseases will infect wildlife, ultimately, too.
PLUS, if you’ve been following the stinklot dairy debate in Idaho – the dairy CAFOs in the Magic Valley may be leading to a resurgence of diseases like Scarlet fever, that bring back images of squalor of centuries past. I don’t have Cable, so can’t watch the Middle Ages feature that is coming up. I wonder if they will draw parallels between diseases that swept Europe at a time when people were largely ignorant of their causes, and new disease threats, like anitbiotic resistance, where we know full well that the consequences are likely to be New Plagues or Super-Bugs, brought to us by the Cow Industrial Complex and the Cattlemen’s or Dairymen’s Ass’ns???
The growth of CAFOs in Idaho kind of makes me feel like if I need surgery, I should go somewhere where they are not manufacturing so many antibiotic resistant bacteria.
I am sure that when cows start dying from resistant strains of bacteria the same ranchers who want to use these drugs will be whining for the government to help cover the cost of their losses…
This all becomes MORE alarming in light of the recent efforts by that bastion of ignorance and ag-industry cronyism, the Idaho legislature, to keep some Ag test results Top Secret, and unreleasable to the public. Perhaps they are preparing for the certain Public Health Cow Threats to come. I am not sure of the scope of this session’s move towards secrecy, but if something that thwarts the Open Records laws IS approved (and signed by Simplot’s ex-son-in-law Wolf Hater Butch Otter), it will certainly be, at a minimum, a first step towards covering up all manner of Cow Health Threats – like just how much of this new antibiotic is in milk, greaseburgers, etc. AND a first step towards keeping the records of just what all diseases those Elk Farm elk may be harboring from the public.
So Ralph, first the VERY disturbing and sickening article on the purposeful introduction of mange to eradicate wolves, and now the cow antibiotic that may result in Super-Bugs that get us all, this all is evoking flashbacks to Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seventh_Seal .