At Hamburger Central, Antibiotics for Cattle That Aren’t Sick<br />“It’s a big ecological shift, except it’s happening within the human body.”<br />The Feedlot Veterinarian<br />Director of veterinary services, Cactus Feeders<br />“There’s a pen up here I’ve been wanting to look at.”<br />Dr. Carter King oversees 10 feedlots for Cactus and some two million head of cattle a year.<br />And there are costs.”<br />Regular use of tylosin on farms, he added, “is a genuinely bad idea<br />because of cross-resistance, involving important drugs used in human medicine.” Tylosin is part of a widely used class of antibiotics used by humans, including Z-Pak.<br />“Everything else loses money.”<br />Antibiotic-free beef also costs consumers more, though groups like Consumers Union feel it “is worth the extra money.”<br />For Mr. Callicrate, keeping his cattle off the feedlot changed his perspective<br />“But today we just don’t have it.”<br />Owner of Callicrate Cattle and Ranch Foods Direct<br />A blunt-spoken former bull rider, Mike Callicrate raises cattle in Kansas and Colorado.
