Farming isn’t always green lush pastures and rainbows. Sometimes the decisions we have to make are hard and painful. For the past week and a half we have been closely watching a three year old cow of ours named Miley. Miley is a great cow. She is good producer and is very structurally correct. In fact, recently she was one of our show cows at the county fair. But, right now Miley doesn’t feel good.
I think most of the moms out there will agree with me: grocery shopping with your kids is challenging. I have three kids: Bella, 6 years; Mae, 4 years; and Nolan, 3 years. Walking through the aisles is a coordinated dance to avoid other carts, continuously apologize for the kids being in the middle of the aisle, and grabbing teeny-tiny hands away from the shelves of endless goodies. Whew, I’m exhausted just writing that.
I am a take charge person. I am a person of action. I am a planner. It is very difficult for me to let things go and not be in the driver’s seat. There is nothing that shakes my world up more than one of my children having a serious illness. I can handle it when I am sick, but it shakes my foundation when it is one of my kids.
For my sixteenth birthday I went for a glider plane ride with one of my swimming teammates, Bill. Bill’s birthday was just a few days away from mine, and we decided to do something “daring” to celebrate my 16th birthday and his 23rdbirthday. Bill had graduated from college and was taking a year off to train for the Olympic Trials, and we became “training buddies”. As “training buddies”, we spent about 30 hours a week together swimming and lifting weights. In between training sessions, I went to high school and Bill worked as a lifeguard.
"Aaaaaaa---CHOOOOO! Oh no, not another winter cold!"
From what I have been reading lately, it appears to me that the next big fight over agriculture’s ability to provide consumers with plentiful, safe and affordable meat and poultry products will focus on the use of antibiotics in animals raised for food.
Posted by Feedstuffs Foodlink By DR. RICHARD RAYMOND
You would have to be living under a rock, or on an isolated island, to have missed the big media splash created by the Consumer Reports recent electronically released story titled: "What's in that pork? We found antibiotic-resistant bacteria---and traces of a veterinary drug."
Each day consumers have questions about how their food is grown and raised – and who better to answer those questions than a farmer or rancher? Each week we’re highlighting an Anderson Live viewer question from our Facebook along with a farmer/rancher answer. Today, we are exploring “Are antibiotics necessary when raising farm animals? How and why are they used?”
Here’s what our farmer/rancher expert says:
Antibiotic use in farm animals can be a complicated topic. We know there can be a lot of confusion around whether antibiotics are present – or not present - in the meat and milk we consume. Many people are concerned about the risk of creating antibiotic resistance strains of bacteria. They want to know when and why farmers use them when caring for their animals.
USFRA believes that farmers and ranchers and our partners must do what is in their power to keep their animals safe and healthy. And when animals are sick or at risk of becoming sick, they should be treated in adherence with evidence based standards of veterinary medicine in ways that don’t stress the animals or the environment and are in the best interest of long-term human health.
By Bart Schott
Farmers and ranchers do a great job feeding America and the world, but we haven’t done a very good job answering the questions that Americans have about how we grow and raise our food. Questions about the environment, animal treatment and providing choices that are healthy and affordable for everyone could be better answered.
jsonline.com
By ARA
Fewer than 3 percent of Americans work in farming. Yet, this sector of our workforce not only feeds our country, it also provides a wealth of grain and food exports that feed millions of people around the world. In fact, America's agriculture sector is so productive that Americans spend less for food, as a percentage of their total income, than do most other people around the world.
People believe a lot of things that we have little to no evidence for, like that vikings wore horned helmets or that you can see the Great Wall of China from space. One of the things I like to do on my blogs is bust commonly held myths that I think matter. For example, I get really annoyed when I hear someone say sharks don’t get cancer (I’ll save that rant for another day). From now onward, posts that attack conventionally believed untruths will fall under a series I’m going to call “Mythbusting 101.”
From Scientific American