A new Cornell University study pinpoints the financial toll that eliminating antibiotic use would have on dairy farms. The team took a systems approach that involves researchers in epidemiology, development sociology, and agricultural and health economics.
Source: Dairy Herd Management, April 19, 2018, Link.
To examine the effect of limiting the use of antibiotics in dairy production, researchers modeled a dairy herd of 1,000 cows. They factored in an average level of the nine most frequent bacterial dairy diseases found in Western countries. They then calculated the net costs of prohibiting antimicrobial use, as well as scenarios involving different treatment prices and milk withdrawal periods. They determined the cost of prohibiting antimicrobial use would in many cases be relatively minor – $61 per cow annually – as long as regulations did not threaten the sustainability of milk production.
INSIGHTS: Studies like these are a beginning. If researches can prove this model, then research will extend to other animal species production methods.