> Have you seen any studies that tracked the amount of benefit to feeding livestock species an antibiotic over the course of many years?  Did the beneficial effect continue to be as great?

Hi Randy
Actually, it appears that the beneficial effects of antibiotics as growth promoters do not diminish over time which suggests at least two things: the effect is the consistent on naive animals, which haven't lived long enough to become inured to it, and/or the effect is not related to suppression of evolvable microbes; possibly it's a hormetic response to the toxins in antibiotics. 

But to recap, the question began when someone said they got a prescription for oxytet even though it was not indicated (negative for EFB), and they went on to claim the infection (whatever it was) went away. I cast doubt on the supposed line between the drug and the recovery (only doubt, I did not dismiss it). Dr. Dawkins backed me up on that, the lack of clear cause and effect.

I went on to discuss the routine use of antibiotics as growth promoters, a very common practice in agriculture. I never doubted that this works, only suggested that no-one knows exactly how or why. In any case, most governments are trying to discourage or ban the use of ant-biotics for non-medical uses, because of the resistance crisis.

My chief objection in all of this is that these new regs were put in place without much conversation between government, beekeepers and veterinarians. I think it was wrong to take the decision out of the hands of beekeepers and put it on veterinarians that have no expertise in this area. There should have been more foresight, but there wasn't, and many vets are trying to meet the challenge (give thanks to them!). 

It is widely accepted that the problem of antibiotic resistance in humans probably did not come from agricultural use of drugs (as Dr. Dawkins also mentioned). All the same, the decision was made to clamp down on this use as *unnecessary.*  There is ample evidence that livestock *does not take a hit* if the sub-therapeutic doses are eliminated, and the whole field of probiotics and prebiotics has grown up around the desire for non-antimicrobial growth promoters. Whether probiotics are as effective in this capacity remains to be seen, plenty of people swear by them. 

I think the beekeeping industry has always tended to go rogue, nothing much has changed. This is the downside of ill-conceived regs: it encourages people to ignore them. However, the overuse of antibiotics is a special case. Even if resistance does not originate in farming it makes no sense to waste this powerful tool like spraying it on ag crops, feeding it to healthy animals, etc. People are dying of common infections like they used to do, before antibiotics were discovered, and we all want that fixed.

PLB

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