Mass opportunity
Metaphylaxis continues to offer returns to animal well-being and the bottom line.
December 11, 2018
“Everyone understands that we need to properly prepare cattle on the ranch of origin through preconditioning. But, if you get rid of metaphylaxis in high-risk calves, we will see an increase in sickness and death loss, with no proof that we will decrease antibiotic resistance,” says Dan Thomson, DVM and Jones Professor of Production Medicine and Epidemiology at Kansas State University (KSU).
That’s too easy to gloss over in an age when so much discussion revolves around antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in humans and the potential contribution of antibiotic use in livestock.
If metaphylaxis were eliminated in the U.S. cattle industry without suitable health management alternatives, it could cost that industry as much as $1.8 billion annually, according to a KSU analysis of the economic impact of treating groups of high health-risk animals with antimicrobials.
“We know that if metaphylaxis were not available, a reduction in revenue would result from reduced average daily gains, increased feed conversions, higher health costs from treating more sick animals, more deaths primarily for those high health-risk animals, among other factors,” says Elliott Dennis, a KSU doctoral student who worked on the study.
Production and health management data for the study came from 10 large Midwest feedlots for cattle classified as high health-risk and administered an antimicrobial upon entering the feedlot. Although the numbers would be different, logic suggests the same production metrics would decline for stocker operators.
Ted Schroeder, a livestock economist and KSU distinguished professor of agricultural economics, adds that removing metaphylaxis or any animal health management technology from feedlots has a snowball effect.
“A lot of that direct cost would be absorbed by the feedlot, but a very significant amount of it would go back to cow-calf producers who are supplying calves,” Schroeder explains. “Even if they are supplying healthy calves, they are still going to be influenced because overall the feedlot sector’s costs get passed down because they are a margin-taker.”
Economic losses ultimately would catch up to the consumer, too.