By Martha Rosenberg
Epoch Times
Excerpts:
Animal Pharma is a huge revenue engine that sells drugs by the ton, often with no prescription or veterinarian’s approval necessary, and it provides a never-ending supply of compliant patients. Unlike “people” Pharma, Animal Pharma requires little advertising or marketing against competing drugs, schmoozing of doctors, and sales calls, and it seldom experiences the safety scandals that plague drugs for people and reach Capitol Hill.
One reason for Animal Pharma’s growth is that contemporary, intensive factory farming is predicated on maximum output from each animal “unit” in confined spaces. For example, chickens were once slaughtered at fourteen weeks old, when they weighed about two pounds, but by 2001 they were slaughtered at seven weeks, when they weighed between four and six pounds. The continued efficiencies require high use of growth producing drugs, and drugs to treat and prevent diseases caused by crowding, stress, and immobility.
Few consumers could name one animal drug used to produce the food they are eating since the names don’t appear on labels (and would kill sales if they did.) And even though the organic-food movement and mad-cow scares have made people think about what their “meat eats”–look at the grass-fed-beef movement–they still don’t ask what drugs the animal ingested.
For example, who wants to eat an animal treated with the antibiotic tilmicosin? The drug label, intended for the farmer, says, “Not for human use. Injection of this drug in humans has been associated with fatalities.” Tilmicosin’s label even has an emergency phone number printed right on the bottle, as well as a note telling physicians what to do in case the farmer accidentally injects himself. (It says, “The cardiovascular system is the target of toxicity and should be monitored closely. Cardiovascular toxicity may be due to calcium channel blockade.”)
Yet tilmicosin is widely used in food animals and even shows up in the milk of treated dairy cows, according to a report from an Ohio TV station recently.
Read the Full Article Here: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/health/animal-drugs-in-your-food-probably-344232.html
