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Sunday 22 August 2010

MRSA - Danish Minister Whistle-blows

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Any reference to the Danish Black List (in respect of MRSA in pigs and people) seems to be completely missing from an English search on the Internet.

Except on the British newsgroup uk.business.agriculture.

But Britain's veterinarians have failed to stifle news of its existence and significance to Britain: a Norwegian journalist tipped off the writer and he published.

You can get the response from the pig farmers to the extraordinary measures taken to protect the population from veterinary recklessness by the Danish Ministry of Agriculture.

Use Google Translate to get an adequate, if not elegant, translation.

The farmers are stunned.

The extraordinary story is carried on Denmark's equivalent of "Private Eye" or Wikileak, but not from a whistle-blower but on the direct orders of the Danish Agriculture Minister.

They obviously knew that the huge advertising spend made by the veterinary drugs industry would ensure that it would not be published by the "regular" Danish media.

That situation is common all over the world. You only ever see favourable comment on veterinarians and their drug pushing habits.

For the moment, they run the agricultural news: although various legislation is in hand to cut off the advertising revenue and remove the temptation for the media to self-censor for understandable, if not creditable,reasons.

"Transparency Thing

Transparency Thing is the meeting place for all journalists, editors
and others interested in the dissemination of public openness."

You can get it in Danish here, and again use Google Translate to get a
good sense.


"In an unusual move , the Food Ministry published the names and
addresses of 1,249 pig farmers across the country by the Ministry
accused of using too much antibiotics into their businesses. The
publication , which has no legal basis , pointing to some of the
places with resistant bacteria, but it is probably also a lot of
innocent looking ."


So, as you can see, although a newsgroup like uk.business.agriculture
is abused by libel and stalking rings, it can still perform a
valuable function in recording events including government efforts to
counter organised crime influencing media.

The internet changes everything.