Food Dialogues
Comment on Question
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How will the agricultural industry grow healthier food with less or on pesticides and healthier livestock with less or no use of antibiotics? I believe both of these initiatives are important to provide healthier food that is also more nutritious.
Author: rider
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Topic: Healthy Eating / Healthy Choices
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The farming community must look to the soil. I am sure this is not news to the farmers that I know. The land is the key to everything. With that in mind let's work on getting the soil back to where it used to be. The kind that when you stuck your hands in it and brought it up to your nose smelled like the earth. It smelled like summer and rain and worms. Check out worldsoilsolution. We can so so so this.
agreed Deborah!
Using holistic technologies: permaculture, crop rotation, methods that enrich soil and allow to capture carbon than release it into our atmosphere creating a gh effect - organic materials like manure as fertilizers (using ways to render manure safe so it doesnt run off into groundwater). We've been in a dead end cycle of chemical farming where applying synth chemicals are creating persistent problems. We need a new model where combined regenerative and renewable solutions are applied to our methods of crop raising. Monocultures will never succeed, people say we need them to feed the world- not true, what we need is more farmers to envision an agriculture that would allow us to farm with our livestock our natural allies in pest & weed control & our future without continuing to destroy our water supply, air & the future of our children.
NO GMO! Especially unless it (and any product that has one speck of any GMO product)is PROMINENTLY LABELED!!!
Monsanto, et al = nightmare. We don't want it in our environment, and we certainly do NOT want to eat it or feed it/have it fed to our animals!
As a dairy farmer and feedlot operator, I can relate to your concerns on the use of antibiotics in animal agriculture. As a producer, it is one of my top concerns as well... if my milk or meat is found to contain antibiotics when it reaches the processor, I can face fines, FDA investigations, etc. I can assure you that the milk and meat you are consuming does not contain antibiotics. As for the use of antibiotics in animal production, we only use antibiotics for the treatment of sick animals, just as a sick child is prescribed antibiotics when warranted. I speak for cattle and dairy producers, and would like to hear additional responses from poultry and pork producers.
About 2 decades ago, the beef packers started a discussion with leaders in the cattle business that resulted in the Beef Quality Assurance program funded in part by the Beef Checkoff and supported by the National Cattlemen. BQA is a part of a wonderful success story, almost all the ranchers and feedlot operators started living the message. Any cattle with drug residues is condemned and does not become beef. The federal meat inspectors are trained to look for the high risk animals and tested millions including every high risk cow. In beef cattle, only a few were condemned. If we as a society took "do no murder" there would be a murder in NYC about once a decade.
I'm also a dairy farmer- goat dairy- and a farrower on a 3,000 sow farm. I can also assure you that our pork and dairy doesn't contain antibiotics. Not only do we also face fines and loss of markets, but we know we are responsible for the food for thousands of people, including ourselves. Sick or injured sows that are treated with antibiotics are marked and not sold for food until well past the US requirements for antibiotic withdrawal. We use the Japan withdrawal protocols, much stricter than the US, since we do a lot of export. Antibiotics approved for food animal use are excreted within so many days... just like drinking a beer one night won't get you a DWI two days later.
Antibiotic use in livestock introduced via feed, supplements, and/or milk replacers ultimately equates to antibiotic resistance in livestock and people. We are at a time of the superbug, infection that seems to be resistant to what was the old standard antibiotic. The bacterium has been attacked by the same weapon over and over so it knows eventually
That is one of the most important questions we can ask. With 5-story cancer wards being built constantly, we have to ask these questions. The food supply is toxic & the soil is contaminated. The Britta filter concept has taken off for water. Now, we need the same concept for the soil. We also need to stop making gaping holes in the earth to disturb soils in one area to replace soils in another. That type of soil transportation causes too much pollution.