Livestock Vaccination

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VACCINES AND ANTIBIOTICS: MAINSTAYS OF INDUSTRIAL MEAT PRODUCTION

If someone came to you and said, “We think the secret to good health in humans is to take one thousand people and lock them into a football stadium and feed them junk food,” nobody would say that makes sense. But that’s what an animal feedlot is. You take one thousand animals, walk them into a small area and feed them junk food. It is little wonder they need chemicals and antibiotics to make it through.

In this article, I’d like to question two of the interventions the industrial agriculture model considers “best practices” for animal health: vaccination and antibiotics.

7-way Vaccine For Cattle

FREQUENT AND LIFELONG JABS

Frequent vaccination is inherent to the industrial livestock model. Consider a standard “cow-calf operation,”¹ which has heifers (young females that have not had their first calf yet), adult female cows and bulls, and calves destined for the feedlot. A website called Farm Progress tells beef producers that it is important to vac­cinate the heifers three times before they’ve even been bred—when they’re two to three months old, at weaning and again six to eight weeks before breeding.² Once they are bred and become part of the mature cow-and-bull herd, Farm Progress recommends vaccinating them twice a year for the rest of the animal’s life.

The “best practice” for the calves headed to the feedlot—the ones you should be most concerned about because they are going directly into what you buy at the grocery store—is a program called the Value Added Calf (VAC- 45) Vaccination Program. Using the VAC-45 approach, calves are given multiple vaccines and then weaned during a forty-five-day “pre­conditioning” period before they enter the next stage of the “beef supply chain.”³

Trade magazines promise that the forty-five-day period “provides calves an opportunity to overcome the stress associated with wean­ing,” which includes “removal from the dam, nutritional changes, a new environment, and altered social structure.”³ However, the industry does not dwell on the fact that while the calves are weaning, they are fed a concentrate that gets them used to the “junk food” they are going to be fed when they continue onto the feedlot.

Also left undiscussed is the physiological stress imposed by the VAC-45 vaccination requirements, which typically include a dozen strains of vaccines, such as two rounds of a “7- way, 8-way or 9-way” clostridial vaccine; two rounds of a “viral 5-way” vaccine containing components against IBR (infectious bovine rhinotracheitis), P13 (parainfluenza), BRSV (bovine respiratory syncytial virus) and BVD types 1 and 2 (bovine viral diarrhea virus); and one dose of a pasteurella (pneumonia) vaccine.⁴ Full compliance with such VAC-45 programs requires that every animal undergo this vaccine regimen before they head to the feedlot, and some programs require verification by a third party, typically a government employee.

Who is the VAC-45 program intended to serve? In general, it is advertised as benefiting the cattle industry and producers by improving the health and increasing the sell weight of the animal. A typical site claims that VAC-45 “name recognition may increase the sale value of cattle when specified and when being sold within the right market.”⁵ Another publication states, “Certainly, part of the ‘value’ in value-added calves can be attributed to properly applied vaccinations.”⁶ Nowhere in any promotional materials, however, does anyone say that the program offers benefits to consumers.

Farmers say they participate in this program for the money, but amazingly, it’s not very much money. A report from Drovers (an industrial agriculture trade magazine for ranchers and farmers) described a nationwide study⁷ in which they compared calf sales under various models:

1. The “base case” consisted of calves neither weaned nor vaccinated but taken directly from the mother and sold to the market. Those calves sold for $1.47 per pound.
2. Calves weaned but not vaccinated brought producers up to $1.56 per pound.
3. Participation in a recommended vaccina­tion regimen without the “precondition­ing” period after weaning would also earn $1.56 per pound.
4. The most complete VAC-45 regime of all (recommended vaccinations plus “precon­ditioning”) brought prices of $1.59 per pound.

Notice how little difference in price there is across the second, third and fourth scenarios. The big jump in price paid came from wean­ing—the difference between $1.47 and $1.56. Beyond that, the various scenarios brought the producers only a few cents more per pound.⁷

Now if you take something being done “for the good of the industry,” but which actually brings very little additional income to produc­ers—and which is not for the good of the con­sumer—that seems like a bad trade-off to me. Even business school professor that I am, I find it very hard to justify this industry “best practice” based on dollars and cents. This is probably one of the reasons many producers are opting out of the “industrial ag” approach to beef production.

ANTIBIOTICS WITH EVERY BITE OF FOOD

As we have just seen, a conventional cow-calf operation will heavily vaccinate heifers, cows, bulls and calves headed to the feedlot. After administering a dozen or so strains of vaccines intended to protect the animal, what is the very first thing that happens when the animal comes off the truck? Usually, it gets a broad-spectrum antibiotic and goes on a regime of daily antibiotics.

In recent years, people have become con­cerned about human overuse of antibiotics, but people account for less than one-fifth of antibi­otic use in the United States. Over 80 percent of all antibiotics go to animal agriculture.⁸ Until 2017, our own farm was conventional, and the first thing that happened to every single calf that we sent to a feedlot—it didn’t matter what we had done or not done to them—is that they got a broad-spectrum antibiotic. Once at the feedlot, animals are put on a regular diet of a specific class of antibiotic called “ionophores,” and they consume those antibiotics with every bite of food. That meat is then consumed by humans.

To understand why this is done, it helps to know that the rumen (the largest stomach compartment in ruminants) in cattle finished on grass alone typically has a neutral pH of around seven, which is roughly the same as water. Grain consumption, however, decreases the rumen pH.⁹ A ruminant stomach was never designed to eat grain. Cows finished on grain have a pH as low as 5.2, which is the pH of coffee. That difference in pH is enough to create something called subacute or acute ruminal acidosis,¹⁰ which can cause gastrointestinal damage and liver abscesses, among other problems.¹¹ In addition to creating pockets of pus in the liver, ruminal acidosis will reduce the average daily weight gain of that animal by about 5 percent.

Adding ionophores to the feed will “alter rumen fermentation patterns” and decrease the incidence of acidosis, while improving “feed efficiency” (that is, it fattens the animals more quickly).¹² However, that “solution”—daily an­tibiotics—sets into motion a race against time because the way we’re fattening our cattle is literally killing them.

One study showed that feedlot death rates more than doubled from 1992 to 2017 (going from 0.7 percent to 1.74 percent) concurrently with changes in feeding practices.¹³ The daily antibiotic dose will keep the liver abscesses at bay for about two hundred days, but after two hundred days, the mortality rate for feedlot cattle skyrockets. So, we have a two-hundred-day window in which to fatten them.

To many producers, this whole rush to fat­ten cattle on a blend of feeds they never evolved to eat and antibiotics to help them survive the feeding seems wrongheaded. Although we once participated in this type of beef production, we finally concluded it was not right for us; today, we take the slower, more natural approach to fat tening cattle on pasture without any antibiotics.

Livestock Vaccination Schedule

U.S. “LEADERSHIP”

Use of antibiotics in animal agriculture is a much bigger issue in the U.S. than in other countries.¹⁴ The U.S. uses somewhere between three and six times more antibiotics per animal than the rest of the world.¹⁵ Even the smallest feedlots are using antibiotics 86 percent of the time, while 99.5 percent of the animals coming out of the largest feedlots have had antibiotics. We’ve got an industry that is sold on this as “standard practice,” and virtually everyone is doing it. In a feedlot, a steer fed this souped-up diet designed to put weight on the animal will gain as much as a pound every six hours—or four pounds per day.

According to the Penn State Agricultural Institute:

“One of the reasons for the tremendous adoption of this particular technology [feed­ing of ionophores] is the consistent return on investment. The net return on investment when ionophores are fed to cattle equates to approximately $20 per head. Return on investment in ionophores is due to the 5 to 10 percent increase in efficiency noted in cattle fed ionophores when compared to those that are not fed ionophores.”¹⁶

In short, producers are willing to adopt this practice for a return on investment of just twenty dollars per head for an animal that will sell for about six thousand dollars retail.

I’ve already noted that this practice does not help the animals live longer, and it is not meaningfully helping producers. Nor is the consumer getting anything out of it. If you are a consumer shopping at conventional sources and buying the products of industrial agricul­ture, it essentially will be impossible to avoid antibiotic-laden meat. Clearly, the industry is not going to spend any more money on safety, so it is up to you to figure out how to be careful. Again, the trade-offs don’t make sense to me.

A FATALLY FLAWED SYSTEM

As we throw more and more antibiotics and vaccines at animals, and as animals die more and more often, we can see that the whole system is fatally flawed. If you care about food safety, you ought to be thinking about this. The only way you can know for sure whether the meat you are eating came from animals that were vaccinated or received antibiotics is to talk to your local farmers. Remember, however, that “local” is not a guarantee; a “local” farmer could still be using all of those vaccines, or using antibiotics or feeding their animals corn, soy or other GMOs.

You are going to have to have a conversation with the farmer. It is completely legitimate to ask questions about farming practices. If a farmer does not want to answer your questions, you don’t want to do business with that farmer. We should all try to obtain our beef and dairy products from small local farmers who use no vaccines or chemicals of any sort. That is the only safe way to obtain your food.

REFERENCES

1. Fairbairn CA, Kime LF, Harper JK, et al. Beef cow-calf production. PennState Exten­sion, Apr. 6, 2020. https://extension.psu.edu/beef-cow-calf-production
2. Day S. Build an optimal cattle vaccination routine. Farm Progress, Jan. 13, 2022. https://www.farmprogress.com/animal-health/build-an-optimal-cattle-vaccination-routine
3. Vining P. Weaning from a calf’s point of view. Drovers, Aug. 15, 2023. https://www.drovers.com/news/beef-production/weaning-calfs-point-view
4. https://www2.superiorlivestock.com/value-added-programs/superior-vaccination-programs/vac45
5. https://agrilife.org/urbantarrantag/other-resources/beef-cattle-vaccination/
6. Selk G. What’s the big deal with VAC-45? Beef, Aug. 31, 2017. https://www.beefmagazine.com/stocker-backgrounding/what-s-the-big-deal-with-vac-45-
7. Henderson G. Value-added premiums $50 per head, data show. Drovers, Dec. 3, 2020. https://www.drovers.com/news/industry/value-added-premiums-50-head-data-show
8. Martin MJ, Thottathil SE, Newman TB. Antibiotics overuse in animal agriculture: a call to action for health care providers. Am J Public Health. 2015 Dec;105(12):2409-2410.
9. Daley CA, Abbott A, Doyle PS, et al. A review of fatty acid profiles and antioxidant content in grass-fed and grain-fed beef. Nutr J. 2010 Mar 10;9:10.
10. Hernández J, Benedito JL, Abuelo A, et al. Ruminal acidosis in feedlot: from aetiology to prevention. ScientificWorldJournal. 2014;2014:702572.
11. Reinbold B. Updating the acidosis-rumenitis-liver abscess disease complex dogma of feedlot cattle. Journal of Animal Science. 2020 Nov;98(Suppl 4):53-54.
12. Hersom M, Thrift T. Application of ionophores in cattle diets. UF/IFAS, Nov. 21, 2018 (last reviewed Nov. 2, 2021), Publication #AN285. https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/AN285
13. Buda M, Raper KC, Riley JM, et al. Structural change in feedlot cattle death loss rates. Front Vet Sci. 2023 Jan 30;10:1087080.
14. Dall C. US lagging Europe in efforts to cut antibiotics in livestock. CIDRAP News, Dec. 2, 2022. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/antimicrobial-stewardship/us-lagging-europe-efforts-cut-antibiotics-livestock
15. Dall C. Report slams beef industry for overuse of antibiotics. CIDRAP News, Jun. 26, 2020. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/antimicrobial-stewardship/report-slams-beef-industry-overuse-antibiotics
16. Felix TL. Ionophores: a technology to improve cattle efficiency. PennState Extension, Feb. 21, 2017. https://extension.psu.edu/ionophores-a-technology-to-improve-cattle-efficiency

This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Spring 2024

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