At a recent conference I attended, there was a session titled: “Antibiotic Stewardship Updates by Species.”

The beef update was by a chief of staff from one of the major cattle feeding operations in the United States.

He started out with a description, “for those of you in the audience not familiar with a feeding operation,” which was good because there were media and consumer advocacy groups represented in that audience that perhaps had never set foot in a feeding operation. He acknowledged that there were those who needed an education.

But it was also bad that they were there because they certainly had to leave the room more confused than ever regarding antibiotic use in beef.

To start with, the gentleman said their company never uses medically important antibiotics for growth promotion. I suspect just about any cattle feeder could say that, and appear to John Q. Public to be more ethical and judicious than the pig and chicken farmers.

Not fair. That is just like saying our chickens are raised without hormones.

Speaking of “judicious”, he must have used the combination of “necessary and judicious” a dozen times describing their antibiotic stewardship. I don’t think the average consumer gives one whit about “necessary and judicious” use, what they want to know is if the actual use is a threat to their health.

But here are two quotes from the very first five minutes of his presentation that shouted out, to me at least, NOT CREDIBLE:

“90 percent of our animals never experience a treatment,” and
Our policies “require a diagnosis for any antibiotic treatment, and THEN only for pneumonia or infected injury.” (His emphasis, not mine.)

The overhead power point confirmed that I heard him correctly, so I rose to ask a question during the Q and A session. My question to him was:

“What are you doing to prevent liver abscesses at your feed lots?”

I mean, if they have the answer, then they should share because I want to keep macrolides working for human health and a liver abscess in a feedlot steer is not about humane handling or the critters health, it is about losing part of the profit by not being able to sell certain parts of that steer.

His answer? “ We use macrolides.”

Whoa, what did the consumers and reporters just hear? They heard that everything he had just said over the last 20 minutes was questionable.

Then he went on to explain that what he said was that while steers were in the hospital that they had to have a diagnosis. Well, I have looked at the power points and listened to the taped speech again and that not what he said. The quote above is what he said.

Doesn’t the animal agriculture industry recognize that their messaging is not falling on deaf, ignorant ears? The advocacy groups are forming their opinions about you when they hear messages like his.

Clean it up or lose it. All you may have left will be antibiotics used to treat actual infections.

Remember the Alamo; and remember “pink slime.”

Antibiotic stewardship update: Really?

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