The Tuesday, September 18, New York Times includes an editorial (the paper's official editorial opinion) headed "Antibiotic Runoff." (Page A26)
It opens:
"One of the persistent problems of industrial agriculture is the inappropriate use of antibiotics. It’s one thing to give antibiotics to individual animals, case by case, the way we treat humans. But it’s a common practice in the confinement hog industry to give antibiotics to the whole herd, to enhance growth and to fight off the risk of disease, which is increased by keeping so many animals in such close quarters. This is an ideal way to create organisms resistant to the drugs. That poses a risk to us all."
It tells us that transferable genes that confer antibiotic resistance to tetracycline have been found in the groundwater around two hog confinement farms and are at large in the environment. And it suggests that the solution is to ban herd-wide use of antibiotics or to tighten the regulations and monitoring of manure containment systems.
It ends with:
"The consumer has the choice to buy pork that doesn’t come from factory farms. The justification for that kind of farming has always been efficiency, and yet, as so often happens in agriculture, the argument breaks down once you look at all the side effects. The trouble with factory farms is that they are raising more than pigs. They are raising drug-resistant bugs as well."
You'll find the piece on line at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/opinion/18tue3.html
It says little about the suffering of animals on factory farms but provides a great opening for letters to the editor that discuss their plight. www.FactoryFarming.com is a great resource for information, where you can see photos of the conditions pigs live in at the types of facilities the editorial mentions.
Letters from readers on plant-based diets might question the need to eat pigs, or any animals, at all.
The New York Times takes letters at letters@nytimes.com
Always include your full name, address, and daytime phone number when sending a letter to the editor. Remember that shorter letters are more likely to be published. And please be sure not to use any comments or phrases from me or from any other alerts in your letters. Editors are looking for original responses from their readers.
My thanks to Scout Kilbourne for making sure we saw the editorial.
Yours and the animals',
Karen Dawn
(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. You may forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts if you do so unedited -- leave DawnWatch in the title and include this parenthesized tag line. If somebody forwards DawnWatch alerts to you, which you enjoy, please help the list grow by signing up. It is free.)
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Date: Tue Sep 18 19:48:41 2007
