A number of important developments in animal and human health are now under way in Britain. They may or may not be connected. We will deal with them in separate posts, in chronological order
In yesterday's Daily Mail, Dame Sally Davies, professor and Chief Medical Officer for England, was reported as launching another attack on antibiotic use in animals.
Britain's veterinarians do not like that and their massive public relations machine is reacting.
Well they wouldn't like it, would they?
But the fact remains that their activities have posed a serious and realised risk to human health, in Britain and abroad, for many years.
Veterinary reform is both necessary and inevitable.
The relevant passage is below, the full report is here.
…She also called for a cut in the use of antibiotics in farm animals, one of the biggest causes of resistance to the drugs.
Controversially, she urged vets to slaughter sick animals rather than give them antibiotics to help them recover.
She said: 'I had a bit of a problem with some vets recently because I said, "Why don't you just slaughter animals when they're badly infected?" It seems to me much better because then they can't transmit them [antibiotics].
'At the moment, if you eat a farmed salmon in America it has probably eaten its own weight in antibiotics.'…
Similar reports are now being carried in a number of news outlets and veterinary reaction is reaching the agricultural news.
