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I agree!
I learned the hard way with a diseased flock--you can treat with antibiotics to mask the symptoms of an illness, but it doesn't make the bird healthy. Egg production goes down and with many chicken illnesses they still shed the virus to infect other birds and perpetuate the cycle. It's better to raise healthy birds from strong stock.
When my new batches of chicks get cocci, I do treat them with Corid. (Which isn't an antibiotic.) But I don't buy medicated feed.
Antibiotics in the factory farm meat industry are just there to compensate for horrible living conditions that promote disease and weaken animals. Maybe if they do away with antibiotics in farm animals then we will be forced to look at the meat industry and improve some things!
The article doesn't specify, unless I missed it, how it will effect antibiotics on a small scale for local small farms. When my hen had pneumonia recently I would have given her antibiotics for that, if I had known in time. I don't think that's the same as over medicating healthy animals or medicating to cover up a contagious disease, you know? I think it's fine to treat an illness (not including ones that leave birds as carriers for life!!!) as long as that animal is out of the food supply for the proper amount of time.
