LMD April 2015

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Livestock “The greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it.” – JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL APRIL 15, 2015 • www. aaalivestock . com

MARKET

Digest I Volume 57 • No. 4

by Lee Pitts

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A bumble bee is faster than a John Deere tractor. beta agonists even existed. I did not receive one letter that supported the use of beta agonists. Not one.

A Lot To Lose After our story and a followup, an advertisement appeared on Reuters/PR Newswire electronic bulletin board in New York’s Time Square that was critical of beta agonists. Our dirty little secret was out and I wondered, was I the tattle-tale? The ad said that the message was brought to New Yorkers, and therefore the world, by a national consumer group calling itself Beef Additive Alert™. If you think that sounds like some militant vegetarian hate group you could not be more wrong.

Beef Additive Alert™ was the brainchild of two beef industry giants who have a LOT more to lose than one insignificant writer like myself. If I had doubts about divulging information that might harm the beef industry, just consider the agonizing doubts the two men who paid for the ads must have had. After all, these two men have hundreds of millions of dollars invested in the beef industry and they placed their sterling reputations on the line. Their desire to do the right thing trumped everything. After our first story on beta agonists ran I expected to hear from feedlot owners who insisted they needed the beta agonists in order to compete and in order to provide food for a hungry world.

At this stage of their lives Harvey Dietrich and Gerald Timmerman have nothing left to prove. Harvey is a self-made man who went from cleaning water troughs in a feedlot to being one of the biggest ranchers in the country, and owner of a beef packing plant known far and wide for the quality of its meat. Gerald Timmerman is likewise involved in all phases of the cattle business including a packing plant also known for it’s high quality beef. So you can see, they have a lot of other stuff to worry about besides feed additives. Serious stuff. Gerald Timmerman is battling throat cancer, for example. Yet they are fighting the bata agonist continued on page two

Measuring the impact of changing antibiotic rules BY JOHN MADAY, EDITOR,

NEWSPAPER PRIORITY HANDLING

So when I heard from my friend Gerald Timmerman and Harvey Dietrich I thought I might be in for a good scolding. To my surprise, I learned that these two cattle industry giants hated beta agonists more than I did. And they were willing to bet their life’s work on the idea that we’d better clean up our act before someone else does it for us.

Nothing Left To Prove

BOVINE VETERINARIAN

ver since the FDA issued its Draft Guidance 213 and the proposed Veterinary Feed Directive (VFD) rules in 2013, veterinarians and industry stakeholders have wondered about measurement. The FDA rules of course, are intended to encourage judicious use of antimicrobials and thus reduce the risk of development of antimicrobial resistance in pathogens, and the industry generally has supported this effort. But, many have asked, how will we know whether the rules, once implemented, have any positive impact? Will the industry be able to measure and report significant reductions in antibiotic use or

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by LEE PITTS

Count Your Blessings

On The Horns Of A Dilemma or me, the hardest part of being a writer is not writer’s block, not knowing what to put on a piece of paper. It’s not knowing what not to write. For example, do you reveal an industry dirty little secret as part of a journalistic endeavor to inform the readership, knowing that you could also be giving ammunition to the enemy? Or do you keep quiet, even if it’s a ticking time bomb? Believe me, I debated long and hard before I wrote about beta agonists in this newspaper. I worried about introducing a subject that we as an industry were vulnerable on, and to be honest, I worried about Merck, the maker of Zilmax®, the most widely used beta agonist. Merck was not going to like my story and I envisioned an army of lawyers ready to pounce. Was it even worth it, after all, I was putting myself and this newspaper in jeopardy, all for one little story? Surely I could find less explosive things to write about. When in doubt, let your conscience be your guide. The story went to press and I held my breath for the fall-out. Amazingly, I heard from Merck even before the story was printed. There were some requests from other brave publications to reprint the story and I received many letters from concerned ranchers who had no idea that

Riding Herd

lower prevalence of resistant pathogens? During the recent National Institute for Animal Agriculture (NIAA) conference in Indianapolis, the NIAA Antibiotics Council discussed program goals and metrics with officials from the FDA and USDA. Craig Lewis, DVM, MPH, DACVPM, from FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM), says the agency sees a need for collecting more on-farm data on antibiotic use and resistance trends, and is currently developing a plan for collecting, analyzing and applying that data. Currently, FDA cooperates with the USDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the National Antimicrobial Resistance Moni-

toring System (NARMS), and also collects data on total sales of antimicrobials for use in animals. More data will be needed to augment those efforts and determine the effectiveness of FDA’s strategy for judicious use of antimicrobials. That strategy focuses on two primary policies. First, Guidance 213 aims to eliminate use of medically important antimicrobials for production or performance purposes in livestock. In addition, FDA intends to require veterinary oversight of the use of antimicrobials in feed and water through the proposed VFD rule. In 2014, Lewis says, CVM substantially enhanced its annual survey on the quantity of antimicrobials sold for use in animal continued on page four

’ve read that many writers have a hard time letting themselves be happy. I don’t know if it’s the actual writing that causes depression, or if depressed people are just drawn to the job. Perhaps I’m being cocky but I like to think of myself as a writer too, and I get depressed once in awhile. Don’t we all? Usually when I’m blue it’s because I’m depending on special occasions, the accumulation of stuff, or the misery of others to put me in a better mood. And then one day I discovered the mathematical formula for a good life: happiness doesn’t always have to be derived by the addition of something, it can also be attained through subtraction. I can be depressed if there is no berry cobbler or homemade ice cream for dessert, or I can be overjoyed that I’m not eating liver and lima beans with the in-laws. I can either be miserable about what I don’t have, or happy with what I do have. It’s a different way of looking at the world. Happiness is a fly NOT buzzing around your head when you’re trying to go to sleep at night. It’s a dog that doesn’t bite and a big rainbow trout that does. Happiness is a parent that doesn’t have Alzheimers, a child without Down’s Syndrome and a teenager who is not on drugs. Happiness is not having to ride the one horse in your string today that bucks. Instead of being forlorn about having to get up at two a.m. to check the heifers, why not be excited about the possibility of seeing a brand new calf or a glorious sunrise? I can wake up and be a grump, or I can say to myself, “Yippie! It’s going to be a great day because I don’t have to go to the dentist today.” And then on those two days a year I do have to go, I walk with a bounce in my step knowing that it will be another six months before the dentist gets another shot at me. Ladies, I know that we menfolk have more than our share of faults, but rather than get mad or sad about our bad habits, why not be glad about continued on page twelve

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