Farmer takes on antibiotic misinformation
WELCOME — Diet studies often conflict, diet trends come and go, but as long as people have the freedom to choose what they consume, marketing will always play a central role in the standard American diet.
An emotionally charged subject, it is important to make sure we get the right information about what we’re eating. Unfortunately, the truth of the matter doesn’t always fit in a 20-second ad on TV or a quippy one-liner on social media.
However, one local farmer is ready and willing to share information about ag-related topics whenever and wherever she can. Wanda Patsche, along with her husband, is a pig farmer from Welcome, and she has a lot to say on a variety of topics. Recently, she tackled misinformation about antibiotics in animals and genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
“With livestock, I think there’s a lot of confusion,” she said. “People go into their grocery store and they see labels that say no antibiotics. They make the assumption that if meat doesn’t have the label, that mean’s there’s antibiotics in the livestock.
“But there is no antibiotics in any livestock that we sell, it’s against the law. We follow the withdrawal periods on drugs that we do give our animals, and I know on our farm we follow that to a T. We sell all of our animals to Hormel and I know that if we should ever not be compliant, we would be done selling there.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, farmers and ranchers (organic or not) have a responsibility to keep their animals healthy, and when antibiotics are deemed medically necessary, they are used. FDA withdrawal periods must be followed. In addition, the CDC states that antibiotics in animals are not making humans more resistant to antibiotics, and the use of them is keeping sick animals from entering the food supply.
“We eat the same meat that we sell,” Patsche said. “In our case, we wake up every morning and our focus is on raising our animals as healthy as we can. Hormel will not buy animals that are not healthy, so there is incentive to keep them as healthy as possible.”
As far as GMOs, Patsche says misinformation is a real frustration for farmers.
“There’s definitely the perception out there that GMOs are not good and that can’t be further from the truth,” she said. “There’s hundreds of studies out there that show that any product that’s used a GMO technology is safe. There’s been no reports of any substantial problem with using foods with GMO technology.
“People tend to think that GMO is a thing, but what it is is a breeding technology and there are only 10 foods approved for market that use it. The consumer doesn’t always see the benefit of that in the grocery store, with the exception of one of the most recently approved foods, the Arctic apple. That’s where people see the benefit, when they cut their apples they don’t turn brown.
“Other than that, the benefit has been for the farmers, and that’s a still a good thing for consumers. What it means is that we use less chemicals and less herbicides on our fields. So when we talk about sustainability, this definitely allows us to be more sustainable.”
For more information on the topics of livestock antibiotics and GMOs, people are invited to check out Patsche’s website at mnfarmliving.com