Extremely unwise. Although most guidelines do accept using proper medicine "when necessary", the animals generally have to become ill before "necessary" is established. This is bad practice. Sensible prophylactic measures can save everyone a shedload of grief.
The airy way they talk about breeding resistant stock and clean pastures, you'd think it was simple and everybody else was just using anthelmintics because they like giving the drug companies money.
Everybody tries to minimise anthelmintic usage in this way. However, these measures are often not enough. A rational farmer will monitor the flock and go in with medication if the results suggest a problem is on the horizon. An organic farmer is motivated to wait until he can't ignore the problem any longer, and even then is likely to ask if there isn't something "natural" he can do instead of using drugs that actually work.
And as for deciding to treat animals that are actually ill? Pray that you're never reincarnated as an organic calf.
Animals treated with conventional treatments (e.g. antibiotics) must be quarantined in a separate quarantine paddock for double the withholding period of the treatment, and they lose certification for this period plus a further 12 months.
Now, if you were a farmer operating under these rules, would you be happy to treat a sick animal as soon as it appeared to be ill, or would you perhaps be motivated to hang on as long as possible in the hope that it might get better on its own? You lose a whole year (and more) production from such an animal. Which might mean all its production, if it is something that would normally go to slaughter within the year.
In fact the statutory withdrawal periods have been very carefully researched. Following these regulations does indeed ensure that no drug residues get into the human food chain. The rest is pure ideological nonsense.
Commercial-scale dairy production pretty much needs antibiotics to control mastitis. Fine, if you're milking 1940s-type dairy shorthorns with the fair hands of a milkmaid. But if you have commercial numbers of Friesian Holsteins giving 30 litres a day, you're in a different ball-game. It's actually the minority of dairy cows who can go through their lives without needing a course of antibiotics.
Losing organic status for a year in that case is a total disaster for the farmer. I suspect what happens if an animal needs such treatment is that it just gets sold to a non-organic producer. Yes, wouldn't it be great if the whole world's production could be organic.
Rolfe.
would anyone consider doing that?? They wouldn't even get the benefit of a placebo effect with those patients, much less any real alleviation of symptoms.
. Kindly disregard the above - clearly evil.
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