Meat section at a grocery store.

These Drugs Are in US Meat but Not on the Label

Thanks to animal welfare groups, most people are now aware of “factory farms.” Concentrated animal feeding operations or CAFOs abuse workers, animals, the environment, human consumers and even our tax dollars. (How? Price supports and government bailouts when diseases occur.) Thanks to greedy CAFOs crowding, diseases killed one-tenth of all US pigs and millions of chickens and turkeys a few years ago.

February 7, 2020 | Source: CounterPunch | by Martha Rosenberg

Thanks to animal welfare groups, most people are now aware of “factory farms.” Concentrated animal feeding operations or CAFOs abuse workers, animals, the environment, human consumers and even our tax dollars. (How? Price supports and government bailouts when diseases occur.) Thanks to greedy CAFOs crowding, diseases killed one-tenth of all US pigs and millions of chickens and turkeys a few years ago.

The public is less aware of “animal Pharma”– and the breadth of livestock diseases that are treated with drugs. For example Merck markets 49 vaccines for poultry alone to prevent diseases like fowl pox, turkey coryza, bursal disease, coccidiosis, laryngotracheitis, hemorrhagic enteritis, avian encephalomyelitis of course salmonella and E. coli. Yum.

It also markets at least 25 vaccines to prevent cattle diseases and an entire schedule of vaccines for pigs including Argus® SC/ST Avirulent Live Culture, “an aid in the prevention of pneumonia, diarrhea, septicemia and mortality caused by Salmonella choleraesuis and as an aid in control of disease and shedding of Salmonella typhimurium.” It even markets vaccines for use in aquaculture.