http://www.foodsafetynews.com/about-us/#.VNlhuubF9VQ

“FDA policies: The main topic of conversation in the U.S. was FDA’s Guidance for Industry #213, which asks animal pharmaceutical companies to remove growth-promotion claims from medically important antimicrobial drugs in food-producing animals, and the agency’s proposed rule implementing the Veterinary Feed Directive (VFD), which aims to ensure that the products can no longer be used without veterinary oversight.”

Here is a topic that complicates grassroots Healthcare and confuses the entire industry while building a market for new product launches by Big Pharmaceutical companies. It also promotes feeding non-food to livestock to produce non-healthy meat and milk.

When antibiotics runoff their patent times, big Pharma then markets them as cheap “growth-promotion” food additives for “synthetic” meat production using the living breathing creature factories (CAFO’s). They still work when the patent runs out, but by using them at sub-therapeutic dosage in mass feeding operations they naturalize the bacterial adaptation to where the antibiotics no longer work as medicine. They continue to work as growth promotion something like this: By negating the natural digestion and providing predigested concentrated nutrition the livestock put their energy into meat production and not into their natural systems. Over time even the livestock are selected and adapted for faster growth under these conditions and we lose the genetics to thrive naturally without the antibiotics and on natural feeds. Meanwhile the antibiotics are made useless as medicine.

At the time that medicine becomes affordable; through mass low dosage feeding they strip the usability out of the antibiotic by building up resistance in microbes that inevitably travel on food to the width and depth of the nation driving the desperate need for the newly patented products. The new products can then be sold at exorbitant prices since all the old products have been strategically fizzled out. It complicates and monetizes healthcare, and it turns millions of living creatures into virtual meat/milk production lab rats on synthetic diets that would kill non-medicated creatures. The livestock genetics steers toward adaptability to synthetic production and away from natural feed where the creature actually has a life in their short turnover cycle.

The second loss comes in a huge shift in nutritional and healthful qualities in the meat and milk that have been emphatically proven beginning with studies at Utah State University comparing grass fed meat fat profiles to “conventional”, than in England comparing dairy product fat profiles of grass fed to “conventional”. Studies have continued to show the same results. Grass fed fats are healthful similar to fish oils, while “conventional” are anti-health causing clogged arteries and other artery and heart issues along with related deficiency related symptoms. There are multiple other factors toward cancer increase vs. cancer prevention, the onset of Beef and milk allergies where organic grass-fed flies under the immune system radar—no-allergy. Sometimes the allergies develop because of the messed up product and produce lifelong allergies as the body adapts a no entry policy that cannot be reversed. Mess up natural foods to make an investors buck so you can pay the buck and then pay a 2nd and third time when your health suffers and when you have to pay more for the medicines needed for healthcare. Someone has a strong business plan and someone does not. Can you guess who?

The Answer to our Troubles is MODERATION:

An appropriate number of naturally grazed livestock can be part of a land and soil restoration plan. Alan Savory Institute has some proven but contentious ideas that he has used successfully for over 30 years to restore degraded African Savanna lands through strategic grazing in large numbers. Everything in Balance is the key. Currently overgrazing continues to cause degradation and desertification. That is non-strategic grazing. Additionally, soils are being destroyed in a super naturally-inefficient system of conventional ag producing ingredients for concentrated feeds. This is followed by Confined Animal Feeding Operations mixing and feeding a worldwide derivative of concentrates. The return of fossil and human savvy input per energy nutrition/health output is arguably horrendous—holistically speaking—and the loss of nature balancing habitat that would enable chemical free agriculture systems to begin again is worse. Worst of all is the soil loss, aquifer depletion/pollution, and toxic soil mixed runoff.

The answer is as it always was: MODERATION and naturally beneficial systems through agroecology. The two can holistically restore human health, productive land area, species diversity and sustainable health, and increase food production and energy input to output return through increased land area with productive soils and an increase in the number of people proudly involved in the agriculture. No, not more migrant workers, more vested local stewards loving and caring for the land while proudly producing food, fiber, and biomass. We need to be eating less but more healthful meat in healthful and natural moderation and growing food in an appropriate mix of less intensive to more intensive depending on the biome and on a larger mosaic of land where the farmer is also nurturing and contributing to the natural ecology and is reversing degradation and desertification. The answer is no to more productive land being cleared of forest or converted from grassland. Instead, restore degraded lands, reverse desertification. Produce more food on more acreage with a net beneficial footprint toward the total ecology with humans as part of the whole! Let’s get to work.

Addendum:

If Tech is your passion, there is room for all. See my post below that I wrote about this article: “Precision ag applied through Organic Ag”

Robotic or remote control can be equipped with mapping sensors and makes small scale more efficient…

Weedmaster-–-Methanol-Fuel-Cell-Powered-Chem-free-Weeding

Precision agriculture joined to organic agriculture achieves a natural double win combination.

Agroecology takes it a step further to marry them to total ecological vitality and balance with the human community’s prosperity that is associated to the land under management.

Vineyard Robot VineRobot essentially a remote control wheel barrow equipped with multiple mapping and map linked sensors along with optics for recognition. Again, more precision for less cost and footprint on smaller stewardship farms

Precision agriculture is precise and complete water and nutrition in real time to achieve custom crop growth characteristics and to maximize the basic 5 methods of weed and pest management. Organic agriculture is holistic soil ecology management to maximize soil health and nutrient cycling achieving disease suppression in soil through natural resilience and natural health. Sometimes the balanced soil ecology needs to be tailored to the crop through specific fertilization routines, bio-fumigation plow down and the well structured crop rotation. Other techniques such as catch crop rows to draw away insects, barrier crops to shield from drift in pests, or scent masking rows to reduce pressures can be accommodated by precision agriculture for maximum production of multiple crop species in a single field. Precision ag can also dry out or de-fertilize individual rows for effective multi-species management. It is a complete system relevant to 2015.

Enjoy all your options, but keep the MODERATION!