French vets are enraged – please support them

Please read this article and support the French vets in their action.

Comments

7 responses to “French vets are enraged – please support them”

  1. Kathryn avatar
    Kathryn

    Signed, totally agree with the French vets. This is unacceptable.

  2. luz maria booth avatar
    luz maria booth

    yes it is not acceptable.

  3. Tunde avatar

    I could not understand the following sentence in the article that was linked in:
    “They are protesting about a proposition by the French Minister of Health, who is a doctor not a vet, that French vets could not keep/use/prescribe antibiotics any more! They would only be able to obtain antibiotics from a pharmacy or give clients a prescription to do so.”
    So now, are they prohibited to prescribe antibiotics or are they not?

  4. Tunde avatar

    I think the real HUGE mass of antibiotics is used on farms to mast cattle for meat, maybe pigs, too. I do not know about the dirty details. I suppose that is what the government wants to stop as more and more antibiotics resistant bacteria strains are appearing.
    Here an interesting article:
    http://michaelpollan.com/articles-archive/power-steer/
    And here is the future for inspectors on farms when antibiotics will be controlled more or even their abuse prohibited as hormone abuse was years ago
    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/why-the-mafia-is-into-your-beef-1342852.html
    I mean that our pets would not get antibiotics as easily as before anymore that is rather a side effect I suppose…
    My cat was recently sick with an inflammation of the bladder.
    To my surprise the German local vet did NOT prescribe antibiotics! She gave us Metacam instead, which consists of an anti-inflammatory agent combined with a painkiller.
    I was rather unhappy with the vet’s choice, but she insisted that as the cat would not be in pain she would not try to urinate every 2 seconds but would let her bladder to fill itself as normal and then wee in a strong spurt and that will wash out the bacteria. So she explained it to me. She also told me that when she would give us antibiotics, the risk of the bladder inflammation becoming nearly incurable is pretty high.
    Honestly I did not believe her very much…
    BUT… after 7 days on Metacam the cat is cured.
    Without antibiotics.
    (Actually the symptoms disappeared just after the first Metacam shot, within an hour approx.)

  5. Beryl Brennan avatar

    At the moment they can still carry antibiotics in their surgeries and in their vehicles when they go out on call. It is this practice which the Minister of Health wants to stop. As you can imagine, on a call-out, if a vet cant carry antibiotics, it could cause suffering to a sick animal, especially if it happened on a Saturday afternoon/Sunday/fete day when the pharmacies are shut!
    On Saturday, 16 November 2013,

  6. Tunde avatar
    Tunde

    That would be of course bad… Stronger regulation – I find it o.k.
    But this version goes then too far I agree.
    There are cases of course when antibiotics are a far better choice than any other medicine.
    Normally in Germany as well as in Hungary there is always one pharmacy open on holidays and on Sunday when all the others are closed in a certain area.
    But it might be different in France of course. Then it is of course a huge problem when a vet can not obtain a certain antibiotic from anywhere…..

  7. Beryl Brennan avatar

    There would be a rota of pharmacies open but on a callout the vet would have to find the nearest, drive there, purchase the antibiotics, drive back…all a waste of time and his time and fuel costs would be added to the bill for the client. One has to look at the distinct possibility that the Minister of Health – who is a doctor – is targeting the vets rather than her own profession who are not allowed to sell medicine – they issue a prescription which has to be taken to the pharmacie – and prescribe far too many antibiotics. So she argues – why shouldnt vets have to do the same? Blinkered!