Day 115 - 06 Apr 95 - Page 18
1 MR. RAMPTON: Do you accept that the therapeutic use of drugs to
2 cure animals that are ill -- that is what therapeutic
3 means, I think -- is a permissible practice?
4 A. Good husbandry would treat each animal individually.
5 Mass medication which has to be undertaken in these
6 conditions is bad medication and invites the danger of
7 multiresistant organisms.
8
9 Q. I do not think that is an answer to my question. Do you
10 agree or do you disagree with the therapeutic use of drugs
11 for the treatment of illness in animals?
12 A. I agree with that use as advised by a caring vet.
13
14 Q. I have another question: Do you agree or disagree with
15 preventative or prophylactic use of pharmaceuticals for the
16 prevention of illness in animals at the time and only at
17 the time of an outbreak of an epidemic or something
18 similar?
19 A. That I regard only as a Fire Brigade operation.
20 Obviously, if you have an epidemic on your hand you have
21 got to do something urgently, but essentially you should
22 cure the cause. Therapy is a question of curing causes and
23 not suppressing symptoms. So, you should deal with the
24 environment and the conditions the animals are reared so
25 that they do not get these epidemics; the same goes for
26 human beings.
27
28 Q. If the use of antibiotics is restricted in the two ways
29 that I have described, that is to say, therapy and
30 prophylactic treatment on occasion of an outbreak not in
31 general or routine use, what danger is there to human
32 beings from those animals once they have been slaughtered?
33 A. Well, the danger is not just to the animals that have
34 been slaughtered but the dangers of multiresistant
35 organisms. I have told you that pig flu, for example, is a
36 very infectious disease. It is also a zoonoses in some
37 ways. These bugs can get into the human condition. So,
38 the spread is more insidious. That is why we are
39 concerned.
40
41 At the moment, last week we heard again, the Veterinary
42 Products Committee is having another meeting on this whole
43 question of multiresistant, the development of
44 multiresistant bugs.
45
46 So, I have two reservations about what I have in front of
47 me. One is that there may be a misunderstanding about the
48 definition of the treatments, of what is an antibiotic and
49 what is included in the feeds by compounders who Mr. Bowes
50 may have very little control over. Secondly, the use of
51 mass medication generally instead of clearing up the
52 essential problems. I am expressing the reservations
53 because I have gone through this pretty carefully in a
54 short space of time and I do not see a satisfactory answer
55 to my reservations.
56
57 MR. RAMPTON: I think, if I may say so, Dr. Long, your
58 reservation is based on a number of assumptions for which
59 there is no basis to be found in the evidence of Mr. Bowes,
60 but I am not going to argue with you about it. What I want
