Rural chicken farms are generally fed with antibiotics, pigs and cattle are also used.

The villagers said: all our chickens take antibiotics.

Experts say it's okay to take some to prevent chicken plague, but it will be terrible if you don't stop taking the medicine seven days before it is sent to slaughter.

Our reporter Li Yang and Xu Yan

Chicken is a frequent customer on the dinner table, because it contains less saturated fatty acids, so it is healthier than red meat such as pigs and sheep. However, over the past few days, reports on illegal chicken farming have been frequently reported in the newspaper. On December 11, this newspaper reported the news about hormone-ripening "fast-growing chickens." on December 18, CCTV once again exposed that white-feather chicken farmers in Tengzhou, Shandong, and other places illegally used a variety of antibiotics and illegal drugs, which raised questions about the safety of chicken. Why do you use antibiotics to raise chickens? Can you still eat this kind of chicken? A reporter from the Life Times interviewed relevant experts in this regard.

The use of antibiotics is common

In order to prevent white-feathered broilers from getting sick or dying, some farms have a set of "tips" to give chickens antibiotics twice a day from the first day they are fenced, CCTV reported.

In this regard, Mr. Wang, who used to run a chicken farm in rural Hebei, told the Life Times that the scale of raising chickens in rural areas is generally small, most chicken farmers have a low level of education, and everyone has different methods and frequencies of adding antibiotics to their chickens. Many farmers listen to what others say and then imitate what they do, and they don't know which drugs are prohibited. And there are no professionals to guide them at all. Mr. Wang told the reporter helplessly that chickens are particularly easy to get sick, and if they are not given antibiotics, they may all die within one night, and often one family has chicken plague, the whole village will be affected, and farmers really cannot afford to pay for it. as a result, some farmers even gave up raising chickens.

According to the International Herald, the phenomenon of antibiotic feeding is not unique to chicken farms. Pigs, cows and even artificially raised fish and shrimp all face the same fate. Data show that China produces about 210000 tons of antibiotic raw materials every year, of which 97000 tons of antibiotics are used in animal husbandry and aquaculture, accounting for 46.1% of the total annual output, and it is a very common phenomenon for animal farming to use a large number of antibiotics. However, as early as 2006, the European Union banned all kinds of antibiotics in feed, and many countries have followed suit since then.

Medicine must be stopped 7 days before slaughter.

"chickens also get sick, and if they get sick, they have to take medicine." "the key is to strictly abide by the drug withdrawal period," Chen Jilan of the Poultry Research Office of the Beijing Institute of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Medicine of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences told the Life Times. " According to the regulations of the Ministry of Agriculture on the raising and management of broilers, broilers must stop using all drugs seven days before they are slaughtered, and this rule has become a piece of paper in many chicken farms. Some farmers said that in practice, the drug is generally stopped 3 days before the market, and if the chicken is stopped for 7 days, the chicken may die, so it must be maintained with medicine. Mr. Wang said that farmers have no choice but to use antibiotics, and they also hope to have better farming techniques to help them get rich.

Zhu Yi, an associate professor at the School of Food Science and Nutrition Engineering at China Agricultural University [Weibo], told the Life Times that if the medicine is stopped seven days before the market, the chicken itself can metabolize the antibiotics in its body, so there is nothing wrong with eating this kind of chicken. However, if the drug is not stopped in time, there will be antibiotic residues in the animal body, and people eating it is tantamount to "taking second-hand antibiotics." Long-term consumption of "anti-food" will unwittingly increase the drug resistance of the human body, which is tantamount to planting an "invisible bomb" in the human body. in the event of illness in the future, there may be no cure. In addition, some experts warn that eating "anti-food" may also lead to urticaria or allergic symptoms and other adverse reactions. Many medical scientists in the United States also believe that there is a clear link between the abuse of antibiotics by animals and the infection of drug-resistant bacteria in humans.

Don't eat more than 100 grams of meat every day.

Although the Ministry of Agriculture has stipulated the highest residue standard of antibiotics in animal food, with the rapid development of meat products in recent years and the lack of systematic supervision over the use of antibiotics in the domestic breeding industry, it is also difficult for relevant departments to detect antibiotic residues in every batch of listed livestock meat products. And even if breeders are detected for illegal use of antibiotics, the punishment is generally criticism of education and fines, deterrence is not strong enough. It is understood that the sampling rate of chicken drug residues raised by farmers by suppliers of large fast food chains is only 4 per 5000, or even as low as two, which undoubtedly leads to a large number of "missing fish".

Of course, on the one hand, the relevant departments should strengthen supervision, on the other hand, enterprises should also strengthen self-discipline. Zhu Yi said, "safe food is produced, not regulated. Enterprises should take the first step of food safety from the source." In addition, Professor Lu, dean of the School of Food Science and Technology of Nanjing Agricultural University, said that accelerating the development of biogenic feed additives instead of antibiotics is also one of the ways to avoid the abuse of antibiotics.