VIEWERS
must have been left confused after last week's BBC television programme
on drugs in animal husbandry and organic versus intensive farming.
The experts, aided by filmed shots of processing
plants and abattoirs, told them that poultry was involved in 6,000
of the 11,000 cases of notified food poisoning in a year. Salmonella
and the use of drugs was put over as a health risk in the film and
pre-publicity that has brought industry protests of bias.
Then came the industry in the shape of Robin Pooley,
chairman of the British Poultry Meat Association's marketing committee,
to assure them that chicken was the safest meat on the market -
high in protein, low in calories and low in animal fats. "It
is a damn sight cleaner than when I entered the industry - and that's
a working lifetime," he claimed.
After the film had discussed the use of forbidden
drugs and the incidence of salmonella, Mr Pooley claimed that it
was possible to take the lid off any industry and find some malpractices.
But the truth was the poultry industry had been created out of nothing
in 25 years.
When it started families ate 1 1/2 chickens a
year. Now the rate was one chicken a year every two weeks.
"People enjoy it and don't get sick,"
he told viewers and a member of the anti-intensive lobby which the
BBC had placed in a barn somewhere in Kent.
But the chairman of the programme returned to
poultry's track record on salmonella and the worry that it caused
to the Environmental Health Association.
Mr Pooley counter attacked. "We know more about
salmonella in chicken than they do."
The feed for his chickens (Buxted) was salmonella free
and it was the same for the breeding flocks. It was possible to
produce a salmonella free bird, but there was still the hazard of
cross infection from other meats in the kitchen.
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The
poultry industry was suffering to an extent from its high degree
of sophistication and efficiency. With its monitoring systems, laboratories,
vets and technicians it was producing more data and statistics than
anyone else.
He was on the attack again when a voice from the
barn in Kent suggested the people were prepared to pay more for
their meat if they knew it would be improved.
Such a move would destroy the poultry industry,
he claimed. When another voice suggested that this would be a good
thing he detailed the consequences. The loss of 100,000 jobs. The
loss of a £1,000 million industry. The loss of 100 million
dollars in exports.
The film which preceded the discussion alleged
that livestock farmers were still using drugs banned by legislation
which followed the 1969 Swann report on the use of antibiotics.
A spokesman for the Pharmaceutical Society said there was a substantial
black market in antibiotics worth £500,000 a year compared
to the estimated total of £20 millions in legal drugs. There
was growing evidence that animals were developing resistances to
drugs.
Experts claimed that intensive husbandry was living
on a knife edge and that modern methods were conducive to the very
high carriage of salmonella.
They would only come to grips with the problem
when the industry and the public accepted that it would cost a lot
more money to reduce the rate, particularly in poultry. In the meantime,
the public should assume that the raw meat coming into their kitchen
was contaminated.
Don Haxby, immediate past president of the British
Veterinary Association, pointed out that all meat could carry salmonella,
but it could be controlled on the farm and the input diminished.
His advice to housewives was cook the meat properly
to kill any salmonella. "Cook it! Cook it! Cook it!" was
his massage.
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