Stewardship Tip Oct 27th, 2009-Drug Free Livestock
Growth hormones in animal wastes present an emerging risk to aquatic environments. Given the trend in agriculture toward concentrated animal feeding operations and the extensive volume of waste generated, the risk for environmental impact is great.
Not all medication that is given to livestock will be absorbed or metabolized. Livestock will excrete unabsorbed and unmetabolized antibiotics or growth hormones. Unmetabolized medications in animal waste can end up in our lakes, streams, and rivers.
We can help by insisting on drug-free meat when we shop at our local market. Let your butcher or grocer know that antibiotics and growth hormones in livestock adversely affect our environment and that you prefer meat that is drug free.
Why it is important to the fish: Livestock excrete unmetabolized medication in their urine and feces. When feces from confined animal feeding operations is recycled as fertilizer, unmetabolized growth hormones can leech into the soil, potentially affecting the groundwater. It can also runoff into the watershed. When present in water, even in small concentrations, growth hormones can cause endocrine disruption in fish. Many researchers believe that there is a connection between hormones in our streams and hermaphrodite fish.
The long term affects of hermaphrodism could be fatal. Within a species, a population that could not reproduce would come to an abrupt end. It is not difficult to imagine the consequences if hermaphrodism spread through an entire species.
When we insist on drug free meat at our local market, we help to keep unmetabolized growth hormones out of our of our waterways. A small act such as this will help reduce the occurence of hermaphrodism in our of our fish.
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