It Shouldn't Happen to a Pig, Brass Tacks, BBC2, 1979

Radio Times

Tuesday 8 May 1979

BBC2
8.10-9.0 New Series

Brass Tacks

It Shouldn't Happen to a Pig

Britain's public health enemy number one is salmonella. It's a source of disease that lurks in most of the meat that we eat, and it's on the increase because of the way our farming industry is run.
   Diseases spread quickly amongst pigs and chickens in factory farms unless huge quantities of drugs are used to keep them at bay. And those diseases increasingly spill over into the human population. So is it time to call a halt? Is it time to chose between cheap meat and safe meat?
   Judge for yourself - as the people who make decisions come face-to-face with the people those decisions will affect. First the arguments, then your chance to join the debate.

This week Brass Tacks takes the lid off Britain’s factory farms … animals that have to be given regular doses of drugs to keep them healthy … meat stuffed full of hormones and antibiotics … the risk of transmitting disease to the consumer … just some of the by-products of intensive livestock production.

The farmers say the new methods are cheaper and keep food prices down, but what is the real price of your Sunday joint?

Radio Times

5-11 May 1979

Brass Tacks: Putting you in the picture

A new concept in broadcasting giving you, the viewer and listener, a chance to have your say on issues of national importance – that’s the idea behind a remarkable broadcasting experiment linking BBCtv and Local Radio stations that gets under way this week.

Brass Tacks will be bringing you up-to-the-minute reports on current affairs live from the BBC’s Manchester studios, and you will be able to join in the argument about the issues raised by phoning your Local Radio station after the programme.

Your line to Brass Tacks

From next week the Brass Tacks debate is going nationwide - enabling you to make the news – as the Brass Tacks programme on Windscale did last year. Starting next Monday, BBC2 will be reporting back on what was said and what happened after the Tuesday evening debates on radio and television. Return Call will feature a selection of the ideas and the personalities from the radio debates.

Those who aren’t able to take part in the phone-ins can register their views by writing to Brass Tacks in Manchester.

Sunday Telegraph

29 April 1979

Protest at drugs 'scare'

By DAVID BROWN, Agricultural Correspondent

The National Farmers' Union is preparing to send a strongly-worded letter of protest to Mr Ian Threthowan, director general of the BBC, about a forthcoming television programme which will claim that people may be harmed by eating meat from cattle, pigs and poultry which have been treated by veterinary drugs.
   Other objections have been made by representatives of Britain's farm vets, butchers and meat wholesalers who fear that a "Brass Tacks" programme due to be screened on BBC2 on May 8 will unjustifiably scare the public into buying less meat.
   The union, which represents 140,000 farmers in England and Wales, together with the British Veterinary Association and the National Federation of Meat Traders, are angry that they were not consulted about the contents of the programme.
   They also object to the front cover of next week's issue of the Radio Times

which will carry the picture of a young pig and the words: "Health Warning: Meat and poultry may seriously affect your health."
MODERN METHODS
   The programme, which will be followed by a studio discussion and phone-in programmes on local BBC radio stations, deals with modern farming methods and the use of drugs to treat livestock.
   Details of the programme, which contains evidence about the widespread availability of drugs on Britain's intensive live-stock farms, have leaked to farmers, wholesalers, and vets connected with the industry.
   The National Farmers' Union said yesterday: "Necessary drugs which are used in meat and poultry production are used under strict Government and veterinary controls and we are seriously worried about the damaging implication that certain modern farming techniques are a risk to the public.

Daily Mail

1 May 1979

Sunday roast drug threat

ENTERTAINMENT EXTRA
by Patrick O'Neill

A BLACK market operation providing drugs for factory farms could be a danger to health. This is just one of the claims to be made in a controversial TV documentary next week.
   It traces links between the use of antibiotics in farm animals and the increase in food poisoning among humans.
   The first is a new series of the BBC's Brass Tacks programme investigates the increase in factory farming in Britain and links it with major public health dangers in the future.
   The programme deals with controls over Britain's animal

drug industry,which it claims is officially running at £20 million a year with a further £500,000 worth of drugs sold on the black market.
   'This massive use of drugs is acceptable as long as there are sufficient controls by the experts whose job it is to see that we have safe food,' said Brass Tacks editor Roger Laughton.
   The problem now is that diseases like salmonella, typhoid and meningitis are developing strains resistant to antibiotics used in animals.

Financial Times

3 May 1979

Angry farmers attack BBC programme

by Christopher Parkes

Farmers and butchers are preparing to bombard the switchboards of BBC local and regional radio stations after next Tuesday's Brass Tacks programme on BBC2 - about modern practices in livestock farming and meat production. They fear they will be coming under attack and aim to set the record straight.
   They are angry that their representative organisations were not consulted during the preparations of the programme and their tempers have been raised further by the front cover of the latest Radio Times.
   It shows a piglet with the caption: "Health warning: Meat and poultry can seriously affect your health."
   If the protesters have their way the TV panel scheduled to discuss the programme will be heavily loaded with industry spokesmen. When the TV broadcast is over regional and local radio stations will continue the debate on phone-in programmes.
   In a letter to the Financial Times, Mr Wally Johnstone, chairman of the Meat and Livestock Commission, described the Radio Times caption as "damaging, misleading and entirely without foundation."
   He added: "It is bound to be taken by some people as an official warning, although, of course, no such warning exists and there is no evidence to support such a statement.
   "I do not know what will emerge in the TV and radio programmes on May 8, but the front page of the Radio Times makes it clear that the dice are already loaded."
   The National Farmers' Union, which said it had contemplated

taking out an injunction against the Radio Times and forcing the issue's withdrawal from sale, is pressing for representation on the discussion panel and has alerted farmers, asking them to take part in the local and regional radio phone-in planned to follow the television broadcast.
   The NFU is also preparing what a spokesman calls "hot missiles" to be sent speeding to the BBC's director-general, the chairman of the corporation's board of governors and Mr Geoffrey Cannon, editor of Radio Times.
   Mr Len Moss, of the National Federation of Meat Traders, speaking for retail butchers, called the cover a "scandalous piece of scaremongering."
   The UK Agricultural Supply Trades Association, representing grain and feed merchants whose products, chemicals and medicaments are generally mixed for administration to farm animals, complained that the programme was prepared "without so much as a nod in our direction."
 The Ministry of Agriculture, which was consulted by the programme makers on the use of antibiotics and chemicals, was waiting to see the broadcast before making any comments.  
   The BBC, claiming that the programme had been adequately researched with the Ministry. The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons and others, rebuffed complaints about the cover.
   "We do not expect that the cover will be seen as anything other than a play on the wording of the familiar tobacco health warnings," the corporation said.

Farmers Guardian

4 May 1979

Drugs-in-farming programme starts BBC-TV row

A major row flared this week between leaders of the livestock and meat industries and the BBC.
   The cause is a Radio Times front cover colour picture of a pig drawing attention to a BBC2 television programme on the use of growth promoting drugs in farming.
   The cover picture carries the headline "Should this little piggy go to market?" - and at the bottom, printed in a type similar to the Government warning on cigarette packets, are the words - "Health warning: Meat and poultry may seriously affect your health."
   The programme, to be screened next Tuesday, is the first in a new series of discussion programmes entitled "Brass Tacks". It will deal with the use and misuse of drugs in farming, featuring interviews with farmers who do not use drugs or chemicals in farming.
   This will be followed by discussion and local and regional radio phone-ins to debate what Radio Times describes as "the question of Britain's highly competitive and possibly dangerous farming methods."
   The NFU say they were never

consulted about the programme and after they had complained the BBC decided to allow a union representative to be included on the discussion panel.
   "Our main complaint is over the Radio Times front cover and feature. We are seriously concerned about very damaging implications which we understand it contains, that certain modern farming techniques are a risk to public health," said a union spokesman.
   "Such drugs as are necessarily used in the production of animal products - meat, milk and so on - are used under very strict government and veterinary controls. There is no reason to believe that they pose any risk to human health.
   The National Federation of Meat Traders has also protested strongly. Mr Len Moss, federations spokesman, said: "The health warning is the most scandalous piece of journalism I have ever seen. It is the most alarming piece of scare-mongering which cannot be justified whatever the content of the feature in the Radio Times or the programme itself.

The Guardian

5 May 1979

TV Preview

It Shouldn't Happen to a Pig, BBC 2

Brass Tacks (BBC-2, 8.10) returns with a full-blooded commitment to the multi-media technique it has pioneered: a report and debate thrashing through a topic of current controversy in the television programme, with BBC local radio stations lined up to start phone-in discussion the moment the television has ended.

   Factory farming, and the public risk of food poisoning arising from its crowded conditions and use of drugs - with salmonella the main enemy - is the first subject.
   The public response will be reported by presenter Eric Robson in a programme the next Monday.

Daily Mirror

7 May 1979

BEEF OVER BEEB'S PIG

By CLIVE CRICKMER

A picture of a pig has got Britain's farmers snorting with fury.
   It appears on the cover of the Radio Times' current issue with the caption:  "Health warning: Meat and poultry may seriously affect your health."
   The cover highlights tomorrow evening's BBC-2 programme "Brass Tacks" which takes a critical look at meat production.
   And it was slammed as alarmist yesterday by the Meat and Livestock Commission.
   Chairman Wally Johnstone has sent a protest letter expressing "anger and concern" to the BBC

Director General Ian Threthowan.
   And a Commission spokesman said: "We feel the magazine has pandered to the sensational."
   The Radio Times forecasts that the programme will examine "highly competitive and possibly dangerous farming methods" in Britain.
   This is expected to be a study of intensive "factory" farming and the chemicals used in animal feedstuffs.
   Another angry agricultural expert, Bill Weeks, commented:"What annoys me so much is that there is absolutely no danger."

Daily Mail

7 May 1979

Fury at Radio Times pig

FARM MAIL BY JOHN WINTER

A COMBINED TV and radio programme on the use of drugs on farm animals has upset farmers and butchers even before it goes out.
   They are furious over the front cover of this week's Radio Times which has a picture of a pig and the caption: 'Health warning: Meat and poultry may seriously affect your health.'
   The are to make sure that their views are aired during a phone-in on 20 local radio stations which will follow the first programme on the subject on BBC 2's Brass Tacks

tomorrow night.
   The argument will be rounded off on BBC 2's Return Call next Monday.
   Farmers and butchers have complained to the BBC's Director General, Mr Ian Trethowan and Radio Times Editor Mr Geoffrey Cannon.
    Mr Wally Johnstone, chairman of the Statutory Meat and Live-Stock Commission, said yesterday that the Radio Times cover in the style of government warnings on cigarette packets was 'damaging, misleading and entirely without foundation.'

Daily Star

8 May 1979

DANGER ON THE DINNER TABLE

IS THE meat you had for lunch poisoned? That is the question posed in the first programme of a new series of Brass Tacks. (BBC2. 8.10)
   The programme's ideas man, co-producer and presenter, Eric Robson, believes it is not as far fetched as it sounds.
   He says: "Almost all the meat you buy from the butcher now has Salmonella on it, which causes food poisoning and could be fatal."
   With modern methods of farming this disease seems to

be spreading and becoming more serious. Mr. Robson went on: "Cheap meat or safe meat is the question people must ask themselves.
   "Modern techniques being used by farmers like broiler houses for chickens and intensive pig units seem to be spreading this poisonous bacteria.
   "Salmonella is an organism found especially in poultry and pork. Meat that looks okay when it gets to the housewife, is almost always contaminated.

Daily Mirror

8 May 1979

Peril of pig in a poke

By KENNETH HUGHES

AT last, democracy is coming to television. Tonight, you, the viewers, can pick up your phone or put pen to paper and have a chance to air your opinions.
   The revolutionary experiment is the brainchild of the Manchester-based "Brass Tacks" team.
  After tonight's programme in the new "Brass Tacks" series called "It Shouldn't Happen to a Pig" (BBC-2, 8.10 p.m.) viewers will be invited to give their views, either by phoning any local BBC radio station or by writing to the producers.
   Anyone with anything worthwhile to say will either be filmed or have their voices recorded for a special programme showing reactions from viewers and called "Return Call to Brass Tacks." This will go

out the following Monday on BBC-2 at 11.20 p.m.
   The debates could be quite heated. Subjects to be covered include health problems resulting from factory farming, the disastrous state of British football clubs and the case for legalising prostitution.
   Tonight's programme packs a few shock facts.
   The crowded rearing conditions of factory farming, it reports, lead to diseases among the animals.
   People eating meat from these animals could get salmonella poisoning, typhoid or meningitis.
   Despite this, experiments are taking place in the rearing of lambs in similar conditions. And hormones being used have shown a link with cancer.

The Guardian

8 May 1979

Furious farmers ready for drugs phone-in

By Richard Norton-Taylor

Farmers and butchers are furious over the colour photography of a piglet, on the cover of the current Radio Times, with the caption "meat and poultry may seriously affect your health.
   The photograph advertises the BBC-2 programme Brass Tacks, tonight devoted to the increasing use of drugs in agriculture, particularly on factory farms, and the increasing incidence of salmonella food poisoning in Britain.
   The National Farmers' Union, which considered taking out an injunction against the Radio Times and promised to send "hot missiles" to the BBC's chairman and director-general, is now urging farmers to bombard local and regional radio stations during the phone in debate that will follow the programme.
   Mr Roger Laughton, the programme's editor, said yesterday it was time that the implications for public health arising out of modern farming methods, including the administration of drugs - and hormones and antibiotics in particular - should be debated publicly. Farmers, the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons and the Ministry of Agriculture had all been consulted.
   The programme points to the difficulties in policing effectively the sale and use of animal drugs - something the Ministry of Agriculture itself acknowledges.

   Under pressure from salesmen, some farmers buy cheap antibiotics, sometimes abusing official approval schemes recommended - and since accepted by Whitehall - in a 1969 inquiry chaired by Sir Michael Swann, now the BBC's chairman.
   A spokesman for the Pharmaceutical Society says in the film that there is a substantial black market involving at least £500,000 worth of antibiotics, compared with the estimated £20 millions worth used by farmers each year. The programme says that 60 percent of vets' incomes comes from the sale of drugs though there is no evidence that vets are involved in malpractice.
   Mr Laughton said yesterday that official statistics on salmonella poisoning are unreliable and that British abattoirs do not compare well with international standards - about 10 per cent meet EEC regulations. Also there is growing evidence that animals are developing resistance to drugs.
   An article in the Radio Times on organic farming says that "the danger of tinkering about with nature" was shown by a police warning last August after the theft of 100 chickens at Peterborough. The police said that if eaten the carcasses, which had been treated with a hormone drug, could prove harmful.

The Guardian

9 May 1979

TELEVISION

Nancy Banks-Smith

Brass Tacks

GILBERT HARDING was not only the first TV man, he was the first two-way TV man.
   A friend remembers him "watching and arguing with the television." He would carry on these one-way discussions with whomever it was he happened to be watching and get quite violent about it. I remember him having a set-to like that with Cliff Michelmore and then, when the programme was finished, he phoned up Michelmore and continued the argument in person. People have always talked to television; it is just that television has not always listened.
   Following Peter Fiddick's programme on Two Way Television, Brass Tacks (BBC-2) was something like three-sided television.
   Brass Tacks is transmitted live. Then all the BBC's local radio stations run phone-ins - most the same night, some less enthusiastically the next morning. Finally on Monday Return Call will report the audience reaction in a 10-minute programme just before midnight. To me that suggests a disappointing dwindle with the Brass Tacks bellow tailing away to a whisper.

   The urgent desire of the TV audience to discuss what they have seen has been all too obvious in ordinary late night phone-ins when the dialogue tends to go something like this: "I say, did you see that thing on television tonight about pigs?" "No." "Well it was fantastic." "Oh."
   The chap on radio has never seen that thing on television. He has been working on radio all night. The TV critics' only reason for existing is of someone who has seen that thing on television.
   It Shouldn't Happen to a Pig, the first Brass Tacks programme, was not so much an eye-opener as a stomach turner, It was a blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regimentation of animals.
   It was an intense and incensed and rather unbalanced confrontation between the organic farmers, perched somewhat lovably on bales of hay, and the chairman of the Poultry Marketing Association, made as a wet hen in the studio.
   It Shouldn't Happen to a Pig was an electronic emetic. You either phoned up or you threw up.

Leicester Mercury

8 May 1979

Angry reply by farmers to pig programme

LEICESTERSHIRE, Northamptonshire and Rutland farmers plan to take part in a nationwide phone-in which is being staged as a follow up to a BBC-2 television programme on Tuesday, It Shouldn't Happen to a Pig.
   They are angry about what they see as an attack on modern intensive farming methods forced on them by the public's demand for cheap food.
   They are particularly angry about the front cover of the current Radio Times with its picture of a pig and caption, Health Warning: Meat and Poultry may seriously affect your health.
   The farmers regard public reaction to modern farming methods as often emotional and uninformed.

   Veteran member of Leicestershire, Northamptonshire and Rutland NFU Mr Joe Thomas, of Woodhouse Eaves, told the three counties' executive that the Mercury's Page Four attracted "the most emotional letters on this subject."
   The NFU at national level has protested strongly to the BBC about the front cover of Radio Times and an article in it.
   "As far as we are concerned, this article is not balanced," said Mr Bob Wright, the union's Midlands regional information officer.
   "It only states one point of view. People are entitled to express a point of view but where is the other side of the argument?"

Liverpool Echo

8 May 1979

CHEAP FOOD, BUT AT WHAT COST?

FACTORY farming may mean cheap food but are we paying too high a price for this benefit in terms of health?
   That's the alarming question tackled by It Shouldn't Happen to a Pig (BBC-2, 8.10) which launches a new series of Brass Tacks debates.
   With poultry, pigs and beef being reared in increasingly crowded conditions that foster large-scale disease, the use of antibiotics is spreading.
   And with many modern diseases becoming resistant to

treatment, the bacteria that cause salmonella, typhoid and meningitis are able to affect the human consumer.
   Viewers who wish to have their say on this cheap meat versus safe meat debate can join in by ringing their local BBC radio stations - it's part of an experiment to get the audience at home contributing to the new Brass Tacks series.
   The follow-up programme will be called Return Call and goes out next Monday.

Manchester Evening News

TV probe into farming drugs use

The extensive use of drugs on British farms could pose a serious threat to public health through a build up of salmonella infection, according to a TV programme this week.
   This and other findings linked to the alleged "indiscriminate" use of drugs in livestock farming were powerfully spelled out in a BBC documentary - a programme shrouded in controversy even before its transmission.
   The fist in BBC-2's new series "Brass Tacks," it set out to investigate the connections between a rapid build up over the last few years of salmonella virus in meat and the use of certain antibiotics.
   Viewers were told that it was the balancing out of big profits for farmers on the one side and financial ruin on the other that pressurised the industry into using drugs on the present scale.
   Said an environmental health officer: "I fully believe that intensive animal husbandry is one of the prime reasons for an increase in salmonella infection in food animals and, therefore, an increase in salmonella infection in human beings."
   He added that last year there were 11,000 notified cases of food poisoning in the UK, 55-60 per cent of which were due to salmonella virus.

   The programmed described farmers of intensive units as "living on a knife edge." It said that the livestock drug industry was worth £100 million per year, one fifth of which was made up of antibiotics, but the greatest problem now faced

was the resistance by many viruses to combatant drugs and the development of new "super-germs."
   In recent years there had been a serious build up of multi-resistant salmonellae. Those bacteria were now escaping and reappearing in human food. Meat that looked perfectly all right to the butcher and mouth watering to the consumer could contain resistant organisms that only the scientists could be expected to detect, said the programme producers.
   An example of ineffective treatment and its consequences was demonstrated by a look back to 1977 when a batch of calves on a Leicestershire farm were treated for a salmonella virus with chloramphenicol. The drug had no effect - neither did sulphonamide, tetracyclin or streptomycin - all drugs that should have proved satisfactory.
   The outcome of the infection was that this resistant strain of the virus was found to be the most common found in bovines by the end of 1077 and was expected to be the most common diagnosed in humans by the end of this year.

TESTS

   The programme expressed the fear that this resistance could be transferred to typhoid virus and so making an outbreak in humans untreatable.
   "Viewers were told that all new drugs are tested by the Veterinary Products Committee, but that after nine years in existence there were still 3,000 individual veterinary products awaiting testing.

Daily Telegraph

10 May 1979

Intensive farming images upsetting

by ROBIN STRINGER

THAT punchy, percussive introductory music is a give-away. Another trial by television is under way.
   This time it was in the form of Brass Tacks, BBC-2's new series designed to give the public a chance to have its says on controversial matters by providing subsequent phone-in programmes on local radio stations all over the country.
   But first you must have a controversy. The case against has to be made.
   The first subject for dissection on Tuesday night was British intensive-farming methods which provide relatively cheap food at some risk to our health. Needless to say, our farmers did not emerge from the fray with reputations enhanced. They were judged bottom of the European league of hygiene for a start.
   The image presented in the opening film, which amounted to the case for the prosecution, were horrendous. If true, no one in their right mind would touch meat again. And that's leaving aside the standard blood-and-guts sequences in the abattoirs.

   The scene was the intensive farming unit where methods were so intensive that pigs went mad. Clearly identifiable as villains were the farmers - or those in the agri-business as the jargon has it - who were pumping the poor animals full of growth-promoting drugs without real awareness of the effects on the animals let alone the humans who later consumed them.
   One of the most serious dangers highlighted was that the continual use on animals of drugs such as chloramphenicol, which should be  reserved for the treatment of typhoid in humans, might well build

resistance in animals and in humans too. Uncontrollable typhoid in humans was a possible and fearful consequence.  The farmers' accomplices on this dark side of the agri-business were the vets who, it was alleged, could earn up to 60 percent of their incomes from the sale of drugs. Over shadowing all, of course, was the drug industry itself, but shadowy its presence remained.
   Most disturbing of all was that the source of these fears was not the organic farming sect, who were all televisually arrayed, sitting in the cold on a collapsed hay stack, but public health officers bewailing their inability to cope.
   "Meat," the biochemist had informed us (squeamish readers please avert your eyes), "was prepared in lavatories and should be treated as if it were a lump of dung."
   The poultryman, for his part, vigorously upheld chicken as the safest of meats despite the assertion by one health officer that practically all of it was contaminated by salmonella, cause of enteritis and a potential killer.
   The vet belatedly made both protestations redundant by remarking, almost idly, that cooking killed all known salmonella germs. Who, after all, eats raw chicken?
   As usual with such programmes, many hares were raised but few tracked down. The subsequent public phone-in tended to confuse issues further but was memorable for the compassionate pig-farmer from Orpington who always visited his pigs at bed-time to say goodnight.
   The viewer, left stumbling through a maze of contradictory facts and opinions, is the jury in this trial by television.

Yorkshire Evening Post

10 May 1979

Frank Metcalfe's VIEWPOINT

Without doubt, "Brass Tacks" (BBC-2) is one of the most exhilarating studies of human emotions on any of the three channels. Especially when it turns its visual and verbal spotlight on animals reared on the "battery" system.
   The return of this explosive series slammed straight into contrasts between humans and living meat products. How humans subjected to similar conditions in intensive farming husbandry would soon be the victims of disease epidemics.
   Even to the example of pigs suffering nervous breakdowns due to their style of living and having to be treated with tranquillisers.
   Experts stressed an odd combination whereby to maintain health stocks, the animals or poultry had to be treated with antibiotics. Which also helps to speed up growth, Which also makes them disease resistant. Which puts the saleable products at risk.
   Dr. Bernard Rowe sketched a frightening picture of how too much disease resistance can - and did - turn into an epidemic

in 1977.
   The meat and poultry trade hit back that their methods, which they claimed produced "cleaner" meat than years ago - and that to introduce hygiene checks suggested by their critics would cause a big increase in the cost of their products. The result - a likely sales resistance and 100,000 jobs in jeopardy.
   Pharmaceutical experts dealt with the problems of curbing the black market, mainly emanating from Ireland, in cheap but dangerous drugs and of monitoring new agricultural products. Veterinary surgeons lashed the public for not being hygienic with the products they bought. "Cook, cook, cook," said one with definite vehemence.
   Everyone had a lovely go at everyone else.
   The sad fact, though, remained. Britain is bottom of the league in Europe for food hygiene - and what really bit hard was the stark reality that more working hours are lost in Britain every year through food poisoning than from strikes. That 70 per cent of all cases involve the dreaded salmonella.

Manchester Evening News

NOTHING TO HIDE

LANCASHIRE branch of the NFU have sent a resolution to headquarters deploring the BBC's handling of its "Brass Tacks" programme on Tuesday evening which Executive Committee members alleged was deliberately contrived to stimulate all the emotive arguments over current farming

methods.
   Said Mr Chris Halhead, during Wednesday's executive meeting: "I am sick of trying to produce food for people who are constantly trying to pull the rug out from under us. People are better fed now than they every have been.

Farmer's Weekly

11 May 1979

Anger over TV show

HUNDREDS of farmers sprang to the defence of the agricultural industry on radio phone-ins around the country after the BBC's controversial television report on pig and poultry farming, says the National Farmer's Union.
   The programme, shown on BBC2, debated the use of drugs and intensive farming methods and the possible harmful effects they could have.
   Farmers were enraged by the cover of the Radio Times which advertised the programme. It showed a pig and carried a mock health warning of the type used on cigarette packets.
   But an NFU spokesman was satisfied with the response to the regional radio phone-in programmes which followed the

television debate.
   "Judging by the response of our regional people who monitored the phone-ins, a lot of farmers sprang to the defence of their industry," he said.
   The film shown on the programme was "very biased", but the panel, comprising Charles Jarvis, chairman of the British Farm Produce Council, Mr Robin Pooley, chairman of the British Poultry Meat Association, and Mr Don Haxby, past president of the British Vetinary Association, did its best to put the record straight in the brief time available.
   "By attempting to do too much in too short a time the film ended up doing very little," added the spokesman.

Daily Telegraph

12 May 1979

NIGHTMARE IN A TV STUDIO

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

SIR - I have just taken part in a nightmare. Not one of the usual kind from which one wakes to the comforting reassurance of familiar objects, but under the glaring lights of a television studio as a so-called panellist in the first of the new BBC-2 series, "Brass Tacks."
   The programme purported to be an examination of modern farming methods and, particularly, their effects on the various types of meat produced for the public to eat.
   This is a perfectly proper question for consideration and as a farmer and consumer I willingly accepted the invitation to participate. Perfectly proper, too, for the BBC to be the medium through which such an important subject should receive and airing: the Corporation is, after all, our servant and our friend, and a neutral, reliable and unbiased source of information and opinion. Is it not?
   But here is the rub. The programme was scheduled to run for 50 minutes and the first half-an-hour was taken up by a film which, in the many weeks of its making had been contrived to constitute a slashing attack on modern meat production from the farm to the shop-counter. It included, in most doubtful taste, harrowing scenes shot in abattoirs and unashamedly used dramatic music to heighten the emotional effect upon the viewer.
   There was little attempt at balance, just an assembly of the

worst that could be dragged up for  the deadliest impact.
   The remaining 20 minutes of the programme were given over to discussion between four people in the studio in Manchester and about nine people on a farm in Kent, the latter being representatives of a tiny minority of farming people who try to refuse any "unorganic" aid.
   My nightmare started with the film and the realisation that we had been set up, without preview, to answer what came over as a deliberately loaded attack with almost no time to do so properly; to have to sit and watch the savaging of a first class industry in which so many people work most devotedly with unselfish and ill-rewarded dedication; to have to quell one's anger and try to offer something quick and sensible when the subject called for quiet and thoughtful debate.
  Perhaps, though, the worst part of the nightmare is the damage to the BBC itself: to its integrity and social usefulness. To its right to claim our respect and affection. If so it is a nightmare for us all. On Tuesday night Auntie Beeb showed us that the quest for those damned viewing figures can turn her into a sour, cantankerous and spiteful old woman - a dangerous creature of whom the strongest and most righteous should beware.

CHARLES JARVIS
Chairman,
British Farm Produce Council

Sunday Telegraph

13 May 1979

Panel protest over farm drugs show

By DAVID BROWN, Agricultural Correspondent

A CONTROVERSIAL BBC television programme which said people may be harmed by drugs used on farm animals, has been attacked as a "nightmare" experience and "trial by television of the worst sort" by two farm industry panellists who took part in it.
   The programme, shown on May 8, was the first in a new BBC2, "Brass Tacks" series. It included a 30-minute film showing intensive farms and slaughter-house scenes, followed by a studio debate on alternative "organic" farming.
   One of the panellists, Mr Robin

Pooley, chairman of the British Poultry Meat Association and managing director of Britain's biggest poultry producer said yesterday: "It was trial by television of the worst possible sort.
   The BBC said yesterday that all panellists were made fully aware of the film's contents. It accepted "that the cover of the Radio Times in question misled some people about the actual contents of the programme."
  The BBC spokesman denied that an internal inquiry is planned at the BBC about the "Brass Tacks" programme.

London Evening Standard

15 May 1979

Down to Brass Tacks

A HOWL of rage has gone up among British farmers over BBC TV's Brass Tacks film on their industry.
   "I have just taken part in a nightmare," wails British Farm Produce Council chairman Charles Jarvis in a letter to the Daily Telegraph.
   Mr Jarvis says he and colleagues in "modern meat production" were "set up" by the BBC.
   "The film included, in most doubtful taste, harrowing scenes shot in abattoirs and unashamedly used dramatic music to heighten the emotional effect upon the viewer."
   There was little time left to "balance" the horror of the

musical abattoirs, he says.
   "Auntie Beeb showed us that the quest for those damned viewing figures can turn her into a sour, cantankerous and spiteful old woman - a dangerous creature of whom the strongest and most righteous should beware."
   This, of course, is the oldest row on TV. Can good television ever really be "balanced."
   Naturally Mr Jarvis, who sees himself as a victim, thinks it can. And his protests are an invitation to those of similar mind, perhaps in the new government, to deal once and for all with this "dangerous creature."
   But would that be wise?

Financial Times

16 May 1979

Chris Dunkley

It Shouldn't Happen to a Pig, BBC 2

Brass Tacks has returned with an interesting innovation in public access which combines national television and local radio, but offers as raw material only the same irresponsibly sensational nonsense which

we grew to distrust in its previous series. The BBC should be thoroughly ashamed of the journalism on this programme, and we shall have to keep a very close eye on it.

Poultry World

17 May 1979

Trial by television puts chicken on the salmonella rack

It Shouldn't Happen to a Pig, BBC 2

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.
   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.

The Veterinary Record

Vol 104 No 20

May 19, 1979

News & Reports

Animal production and public health: TV programme looks at “risks”

More than 20 veterinary surgeons took part in radio ‘phone-in programmes throughout the country after the screening of BBC's controversial programme "Brass Tacks" on May 8.

The programme looked at modern intensive methods of animal production and the potential risk to public health.

The programme asked whether it was time to tighten the rules on use of antibiotics even more than the regulations made following the Swann report 10 years ago which had shown that drugs were being misused by some sections of the industry. It asked, too, whether farming should take a different direction and move towards “organic” methods, which were less reliant on the routine use of drugs and chemicals.

In a half-hour film before a studio discussion it was stated that 75 per cent of pigs and 98 per cent of chickens were produced in intensive units. The industry had “fulfilled its promise”. Farmers had brought meat and poultry out of the luxury class. But the threat to the public health was increasing because of the expansion of intensive methods and the misuse of powerful an at times “suspect” veterinary drugs. If the balance were corrected then meat would become more expensive. But to ignore health risks might prove even more expensive. A public health scientist believed that intensive animal husbandry was the prime reason for the increase in salmonella infection. The catering industry and food handlers should assume that incoming meat was contaminated. There were 11,000 notified cases of food poisoning each year - about 6,000 were salmonella poisoning.

John Parsons, a veterinary surgeon who had sat on the Swann Committee, said that farmers were “living on a knife edge” with intensive farming. The film pointed out that it was a balancing act between potentially big profits and financial ruin, Disease could tip that balance, so more drugs were used.

Antibiotics were the front line of defence and a useful side effect was that they could also be growth promoters. The drug industry had “fulfilled the farmer’s demands”. Of a £100m industry, one fifth of that was from the sale of antibiotics.

But modern farming methods had produced new disease problems because, with the wide use of antibiotics, they were becoming less effective by causing resistance. The case of the outbreak of infection due to Salmonella typhimurium phage type 204 in Leicestershire in 1977 was given as an illustration of that. The organism had proved resistant to chloramphenicol, streptomycin, sulphonamides and tetracycline. The film said that in 18 months “a new and more dangerous salmonella had spread throughout Britain.” This year it was likely to be common in humans, because of transferable resistance.

How had it happened, the film asked?

One possibility was the black market in substandard, illegal drugs. The Veterinary Products Committee was the official line of defence. It studied drugs to see if they were safe. But “after nine years there were 3,000 products which had not been checked.”

The programme alleged that some farmers broke the rules. But veterinary surgeons could not be relied upon to report illegal practices. Alistair Porter, registrar of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, said that veterinary surgeons were brought up to have a close relationship with clients and were not supposed to disclose anything they discovered in the course of their veterinary professional relationships.

The programme said that there was little done to curb drug sales by veterinary surgeons. Veterinary surgeons “could earn up to 60 per cent of their income from sales of medicines”. Surely there was a temptation to oversubscribe, it asked? It accused the policing system, particularly of the black market, of being half hearted.

It was pointed out too that out of 1,100 abattoirs only 90 were up to the standard required by Europe. It was only in those abattoirs that animals were inspected by a veterinary surgeon. There were no routine tests to find if antibiotics or hormones were getting through the system. In Germany antibiotics had been found in meat from the UK. But if more tests were done the price of meat would go up.

In the discussion, Don Haxby, senior vice-president of the BVA, said the message to the consumer was to make sure the meat and poultry was properly cooked before it was eaten. Residues, he said, were being increasingly monitored because of European and UK legislation. The amounts now found were minimal and the techniques for detection were near perfect.

That point was disputed by the “opposition” which represented those who wanted to change to different farming methods. Philip Brown, RSPCA chief veterinary officer, said that farmers would have to come to terms with changes in the industry. Salmonella was not the only problem. And “we were at the bottom of the league when it came to food hygiene”.

Robin Poley, representing the poultry industry, said that to destroy that industry would mean 100,000 unemployed, and the end of a £1,000 million industry and £100 million exports.

Charles Jarvis from the National Farmer’s Union said that the farmer had to produce the maximum from his land, economically and efficiently.

The opposition said that there was no more inefficient way than feeding crops to animals to use for human food.

* Although the EVA was not consulted about the programme, it was able to arrange veterinary participation in the local radio phone-ins. Extensive briefing was provided by the Association’s press secretary.

The Veterinary Record

Vol 104 No 20

May 19, 1979

Comment

Down to brass tacks

There is always a danger in producing what is considered to be “good television”, particularly on a scientific subject, that some of the more mundane yet pertinent facts will be ignored.

That was the case in the BBC2 programme Brass Tacks, broadcast on May 8.

The programme looked at modern methods of intensive animal husbandry and the potential risk to the public health from antibiotics and other medicinal substances. (see below),. But as was inevitable given the type of presentation, a number of issues were raised that were not satisfactorily answered.

It will no doubt be argued that the purpose of such programmes as Brass Tacks is primarily to stimulate discussion. To that end, Brass Tacks took pot shots at antibiotic sales (legal and illegal), intensive rearing systems, conditions in abattoirs, transferable resistance and so on. In doing so it never fully stated a case and was sometimes careless over detail. For example, the narrator’s comments about veterinary surgeon was bound ethically not only to illustrated by film of small animal formulations not used in the way suggested.

It was left to speakers on the radio ‘phone-in programmes to point out that veterinary surgeons do not make fortunes from the sale of drugs. And that the veterinary surgeon was
bound ethically not only to protect the confidentiality of his relationships with his clients but also to tell a former if he believed that the farmer was mistreating an animal or misusing a drug.

Controversies should be aired and people have the right to choose whether they wish to have cheap food and, possibly,

take something of a health risk, or change to a different method of farming altogether; one which would be more expensive but would be less reliant on the routine use of drugs and chemicals.

The issues involved in the production of relatively low price meat are numerous: energy and the amount needed to produce a meal, animal welfare, standards of hygiene in UK and European abattoirs, the black market sale of drugs and legislation governing medicines, detection of residues and the inspection of meat. Any one of those would have lent itself to an hour-long programme.

The health risk dwelt on at greatest length was that from salmonella, an organism which is easily destroyed by proper cooking, as Mr Donald Haxby pointed out. The programme did not delve so deeply into other possible health hazards or their prevention. Nor did it ask why the UK abattoirs are taking so long to come up to European standards.

But the representatives of the NFU and the poultry industry perhaps put too much emphasis on big business economics. Health and welfare are emotionally charged issues and fears are rarely allayed by arguments of £100 million turnovers, £100 million exports and 100,000 jobs being lost.

It might have been more to the point to emphasise that the present day consumer is better served with safe meat and poultry than any previous generation - which is not to say that all problems have been solved.

Such programmes as Brass Tacks do at least, for all their shortcomings, make the public think about how the neatly packaged chicken in the supermarket got there.

Big Farm Weekly

31 May 1979

SURVEY POINTS TO DRUGS ABUSES

It Shouldn't Happen to a Pig, BBC 2

AN INTERNAL Ministry of Agriculture survey of practices of calf dealers and fatteners has raised new official fears about drug abuse on British farms.
   The survey, which was instigated last year as part of the last Government's policy of tightening up on animal welfare, turned its attention to the use of drugs almost as an afterthought.
  But preliminary results have now revealed what Ministry vets call 'worrying' levels of apparent drug abuse on the farms involved.
   In particular, the survey has revealed wide and sometimes almost routine use of restricted antibiotics on many farms.
   It seems to confirm the worries expressed in the recent BBC TV programme Brass Tacks about the use of one of the products - chloramphenicol, which is the most effective antibiotic against most types of salmonella including the common cattle infection Salmonella typhimurium.
   Chloramphenicol is also the only proven destroyer of the human typhoid bacteria, Salmonella typhi - and the great

fear is that over-use of this highly effective drug will build up bacterial resistance to it to such an extent that its effectiveness against a typhoid epidemic might be destroyed.
   For this reason use of chloramphenicol in livestock has been heavily restricted for years. British vets are under firm instructions to prescribe it only in extreme cases.
   The Ministry survey now makes it clear that some vets are over-prescribing.
   It also shows that black market dealing goes on - although the British Veterinary Association says this is declining as a result of increasing publicity and some recent prosecutions.
   BVA senior vice president Mr Don Haxby commented: 'It would be a cause for concern if the report of the Ministry survey is true.'
   'We are certainly doing our best to make sure that the restrictions are observed, and we will get tough with vets who are over-subscribing. But we can't do anything about the illegal imports.'

NFU INSIGHT

1 June 1979

How the Union got down to Brass Tacks

DAVID LEE, the NFU assistant press officer at Agriculture House, Knightsbridge was giving the new issue of Radio Times a quick once-over on the afternoon of April 26. Looking across at Roger Turff, the press officer, he said: 'I'm about to spoil your day'.
   Radio Times and the Brass Tacks programme on BBC 2 was to spoil quite a number of days for both NFU members and staff; between them they also involved other specialised divisions of the Union, farmers all over the country, and almost every other organisation connected with Britain's meat industry.
   The small picture and paragraph which David Lee spotted was the trailer for a full-scale feature published in Radio Times on May 2, which made serious allegations about the use of drugs on Britain's livestock farms. Heavily loaded against the industry, full of emotion and somewhat short of facts the effect of the feature was reinforced by the front cover of the magazine. This, under a picture of a very healthy looking piglet, told readers: 'HEALTH WARNING:MEAT AND POULTRY MAY SERIOUSLY AFFECT YOUR HEALTH'.
Misleading
   The layout and typeface used was to similar to that used for official Government warnings on cigarette packets and advertising as to mislead the casual reader into believing that this was such and official warning - and within a few moments the BBC journal's features department was being told so in strong terms.
   The Radio Times features man seemed hurt. "It's just a jokey way of calling attention to it', he said rather lamely.
   The reply he received from Agriculture House was that quite a number of people were not going to think much of that joke.
   Radio Times for May 2 was already printed and awaiting dispatch. Could the NFU obtain an injunction to prevent its publication?
  The Union's lawyers advised against such action. If there was defamation it was defamation of an entire industry; such damage as might be done would be damage to every livestock farmer and retail butcher in the country - not to mention the confidence of the 20 million Radio Times readers.
  Vice-President Alan Jackson and Director-General Roy Watson concluded that since defamation, damage and malicious intent would have to be proved legally any failure to do so would attract wide publicity which could easily be interpreted as an attempt to prevent the public from learning the facts and would draw a much larger viewing audience.
   Instead, it was decided to make every effort to counter this bad publicity. The Radio Times feature was itself a trailer for a new edition of the BBC 2 programme Brass Tacks. This is a current affairs production

which aims at "taking the lid off" matters of public concern.
   The May 8 transmission was scheduled to deal with a variety of matters concerning meat production. Chief among these was a claim, which would be made in the course of the programme, that the extensive and indiscriminate use of drugs in livestock poses a major public health risk. For the first time phone-in programmes, linked to the TV programme, were to go out from every BBC local radio station.
   All this information was extracted by telephone from various departments of the BBC. Within 24 hours the Union had secured a guarantee from the Brass Tacks producer that representatives of the industry would be allowed to answer the claims in the TV studio. At the same time the NFU's sever regional information officers received orders to ensure that farmers were in every local radio station on the night of May 8 and that others were fully briefed to watch the TV programme and make their views know over the telephone.
   All speakers were provided with a technical background brief on the various matters which might arise. Other sectors of the industry, among them the Meat and Livestock Commission and the National Federation of Meat Traders, weighed in with powerful support and by May 8, the Union was fully prepared to refute the damaging allegations in the programme.
   Publicly there is no doubt that the attack upon the industry was convincingly repulsed. Although faced with a confused and disjointed piece of emotive and biased film, which they had not seen in advance, the industry's representatives in the TV studio - among them Charles Jarvis, chairman of the British Farm Produce Council - gave a good account of themselves in a very short space of time.
   On radio farmers rang programmes with questions and comments, while those on the spot made full use of their opportunity to answer questions.
   Privately, the row rumbled on long after the transmissions. Letters from the President, Mr Richard Butler, to Sir Michael Swann, chairman of the BBC - and the Director-General Roy Watson - to his opposite number Mr Ian Trethowan - expressed the Union's deep concern at the lack of consultation over the tone of the Radio Times feature and the production of the Brass Tacks programme. Director of Information Richard Maslen made a strong protest to the Editor of Radio Times.
   Some good may have come out of it all. The farmers, to a large extent, put matters right; the NFU proved once again that it is a body not to be ignored; and a great many people in many walks of life who know the inside story will perhaps be a little more critical of future presentations which seek to 'take the lid off' a selected subject.

Livestock Farming

June 1979

The BBC lets agriculture down

THE BRITISH Broadcasting Corporation has flipped its lid. After weeks of scrupulous impartiality throughout the general election campaign - extending to even fiction programmes - it has seemingly sought to let off steam through the medium of a new programme called Brasstacks.
   This programme - billed in the Radio Times as 'a new concept in broadcasting - is an insult to the public intelligence and professional journalism. If the hitherto much-respected BBC has any sensitivity left it will review the senior staff appointments on Brasstacks.
   Broadcast at peak viewing time on BBC2 on Tuesday May 8, the first edition ran under the title 'It shouldn't happen to a pig'. A Radio Times front cover drummed up viewers with an appealing picture of a pig. Underneath, imitating the style and format of the Government health warning on cigarette advertisements, the following appeared: 'HEALTH WARNING: MEAT AND POULTRY MAY SERIOUSLY AFFECT YOUR HEALTH': So before the nation's television sets were even plugged in, the programme reeked of bias more strongly than freshly agitated pig slurry.
   The programme - purporting to 'take the lid off Britain's factory farms ... animals that have to be given regular doses of hormones and antibiotics ... the risk of transmitting disease to the consumer ... just some by-products of intensive livestock farming' - opened with a film which was largely accurate and fair. This showed farms, abattoirs, vets at work, public health officers at work, scene setting stuff. The programme producers, however, obliviously anxious to keep emotions in a whipped up state, superimposed the most sinister weird music on the film. Every-day scenes thus appeared dangerous and brutal.
   Then followed an appalling discussion session between a studio panel of farming representatives and a former

president of the British Veterinary Association and a curious and totally unrepresentative assembly of 'country folk' seated on straw bales on a Kent organic farm.
   The presenter, Eric Robson, did the absolute minimum to prevent the studio panel tearing him apart. He would put a loaded point to them and then, barely listening to what they replied, swing round to a screen showing the 'country folk' shivering down in Kent. Whereupon a trendy biochemist would make a comment like: 'Meat is prepared in lavatories and should therefore be treated like a lump of dung.
   It was scarcely surprising, then, that one of the studio panellists, Mr Charles Jarvis, chairman of the British Farm Produce Council, should write to a daily newspaper saying: 'I have just taken part in a nightmare.' He went on: 'My nightmare started with the film and the realisation that we had been set up, without preview, to answer what came over as a deliberately loaded attack with no time to do so properly; to have to sit and watch the savaging of a first-class industry in which so many people work most devotedly with unselfish and ill-rewarded dedication; to have to quell one's anger and try to offer something quick and sensible when the subject called for quiet and thoughtful debate.'
   We know that the BBC's own professional agricultural producers and reporters were angered and shamed by Brasstacks. Such programmes can only make their jobs more difficult. This was highlighted in the BBC TV's Sunday Farming programme on May 13. A panel of sane, rational men and women made minced-meat of the scare talk on Brasstacks in five minutes flat. Unfortunately, as one of them pointed out, Farming preaches to the converted.
   It makes us shudder to think what conclusions the average Brasstacks viewer came to.

New Scientist

21 June 1979

Comment

Resistance resisted

Bernard Dixon

This year marks a decade since a committee under Professor (now Sir) Michael Swann advised the British government to curb the then wholesale, indiscriminate use of antibiotics in agriculture. This committee was established because of amply evidenced claims that the inclusion of potent antimicrobial drugs in feedstuffs for pigs, poultry and other livestock (to promote growth and prevent disease) had encouraged the emergence of bacteria resistant to those agents and capable of causing human gastrointestinal disease. Salmonella typhimurium. a food poisoner of man and farm animals, caused particular concern because of its increasing invulnerability to antibiotics, The government took the Swann committee’s advice and brought in restrictions. In particular, feedstuff manufacturers could no longer put penicillins and tetracyclines in their products; these antibiotics would be given to livestock in future only by veterinary prescription, for the treatment of disease rather than to preven outbreaks - something which can be achieved far more satisfactorily by the wider use of improved methods of husbandry.
   A decade later, we have witnessed a massive increase in drug resistance among salmonellae in the UK (with a particularly disquieting spread of multiply resistant strains in the past two years, New Scientist, vol 80 p 90). There has been continued squabbling between bacteriologists, the drug industry, and the medical profession as to how much of this burden of resistance is attributable to the use of such drugs in animal husbandry. And, in the United States, an aggressive and interminable debate on the subject has so far allowed the industry lobby to neutralise the Food and Drug Administration's efforts to take positive steps to deal with what has in recent years become a serious public health hazard.
   Against this background, two items in the current issue of the Veterinary Record (vol 104, p 513 and 511) make salutory reading. The first is a report of a recent case in which an animal feedstuff company was fined £5,850 for illegally incorporating penicillin, chlortetracycline and sulphadimidine into their products. The second is a leading article warning

veterinarians of the considerable difficulties posed by drug resistance and urging them to “think more critically” before prescribing any drugs of this sort.
   “Events of the last couple of years indicate that it may not be purely alarmist science fiction to suggest that we could be considerably nearer to a return to the therapeutic days status of the pre-M&B 693 days of the early 1930s than we realise” the article says. It was in just such terms that Professor E.S. Anderson and others directed public attention to the problem well over a decade ago, and called for vigorous measures to turn the tide. What has gone wrong?
   The agricultural antibiotics market in Britain is worth £20 million a year, so it is unsurprising that the industry has not been enthusiastic, at any stage, about measures likely to threaten its sales. Even self-interest has not induced the drug companies to take more interest in the fate of their products - products which, should the present growth of resistance continue, may well prove to be useless and therefore unused in another decade. Further down the line, the two Veterinary Record items show, illicitly use of antibiotics does go on (an idea always fiercely resented when this subject is raised publicly) and veterinarians unfortunately need reminding of their responsibilities in the matter. Antimicrobial drugs should be administered only to treat an identified outbreak of disease; they should not be procured in large quantities on prescription, from an absentee vet, who then leaves their use to the farmer.
   But hard information is hard to come by. The data we do have - and lots of them - relate to the epidemic spread of drug resistance, particularly the transmissible type. It is important that we continue to monitor this dismal picture. Just as necessary now, however, are measures instigated by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to monitor the spread of antibiotics themselves, to show how they are being deployed on the farm and in what quantities. The very existence of such machinery might make a considerable impact on the pattern of drug use, and could hardly fail to be beneficial.