Why Are Pig Farmers Still Using Growth-Promoting Drugs?

It's one of the most controversial practices in agriculture: feeding small amounts of antibiotics to animals in order to make them grow faster. But what if the drugs don't even work very well? There's some good evidence that they don't, at least in pigs. They used to deliver a boost in growth, but that effect has disappeared in recent years or declined greatly. The reason for this is interesting and even paradoxical. Researchers think the antibiotics used to work by suppressing low-grade infections. In recent years, however, pork producers found other ways to accomplish the same thing through improved hygiene . As a result, the drugs have become largely superfluous -- yet many farmers still use them.

To understand how this happened, you have to step back in time, says Steve Dritz, a specialist in pig nutrition at Kansas State University. Sixty years ago, when antibiotics were new, "people started treating animals, and feeding [the antibiotics], and finding that they had increased growth rates and feed efficiencies," he says. Nursery-age pigs, for instance, grew 12 to 15 percent faster with antibiotics. The animals also needed less feed to reach full weight. Other studies showed similar results in chickens and cattle. In the 1980s, a new set of studies found similar effects. So the growth-promoting effects of antibiotics became standard practice among meat producers.

Fast forward to the 1990s. Dritz was starting his career as a scientist at Kansas State University, and pork production was changing dramatically.

Previously, pigs were born and raised in one barn or in several barns close together. This meant infections could easily pass from one generation to the next, the way that kids share germs between their friends on the playground and their parents at home. Under the new system, when piglets are weaned, they move to a whole different place. That new site is carefully scrubbed and free of disease.

Craig Rowles, who runs a large swine operation in Carroll, Iowa, shows me one such room. There's not a piglet in sight. "This room just got completely washed and disinfected, and now it's going to sit here and dry for a while," he says.

A whole group of pigs will come in here together, and later they will move out together to yet another site. "That group of pigs will stay together until they go to market," Rowles says.

The groups are kept strictly separated from each other. If workers move between the groups, they first have to change their boots.

When farmers adopted multisite production, it cut down on disease -- and pigs actually grew faster. What are the answers to this following set of questions: 1. what are they feeding to the pigs
2. what were they used for at first
Answer: 1. antibiotics
2. unknown

China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a unitary sovereign state in East Asia and the world's most populous country, with a population of around /1e9 round 3billion. Covering approximately , it is the world's second-largest state by land area and third- or fourth-largest by total area. Governed by the Communist Party of China, it exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four direct-controlled municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing) and the Special Administrative Regions Hong Kong and Macau, also claiming sovereignty over Taiwan. China is a great power and a major regional power within Asia, and has been characterized as a potential superpower.

China emerged as one of the world's earliest civilizations in the fertile basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. For millennia, China's political system was based on hereditary monarchies, or dynasties, beginning with the semi-legendary Xia dynasty. Since then, China has expanded, fractured, and re-unified numerous times. In 1912, the Republic of China (ROC) replaced the last dynasty and ruled the Chinese mainland until 1949, when it was defeated by the communist People's Liberation Army in the Chinese Civil War. The Communist Party established the People's Republic of China in Beijing on 1 October 1949, while the ROC government retreated to Taiwan with its present "de facto" capital in Taipei. Both the ROC and PRC continue to claim to be the legitimate government of all China, though the latter has more recognition in the world and controls more territory. What are the answers to this following set of questions: 1. What is China officially called?
2. Where is it?
3. Where did it start?
4. Was it near a river?
5. Which one?
6. Was it an early civilization?
7. What was their political system at the beginning?
8. What was another name for that?
9. What was the first one?
10. When did the last one end?
11. What replaced them?
12. Is the ROC still operating?
13. In China?
14. Where is it?
15. What is now China?
16. What is China now called?
17. When did it change?
18. Why?
19. How large is it land wise?
20. How populous is it?
Answer: 1. People's Republic of China
2. East Asia
3. North China Plain
4. Yes
5. Yellow River
6. Yes
7. Hereditary monarchy
8. Dynasty
9. Xia dynasty
10. 1912
11. Republic of China
12. Yes
13. No
14. Taiwan
15. A great power and a major regional power
16. People's Republic of China
17. 1 October 1949
18. The Communist Party defeated the ROC
19. It is the world's second-largest state by land area
20. The most

Linda and David have traveled by air from London to Sydney, Australia. Linda has promised her mother that she will ring her to let her know that they have arrived safely. This is something she had done ever since she was a child. David thinks it is not a good idea to ring so far, to spend too much, and to say so little. "If there were an accident. " He says, 'they'd know soon enough. Bad news travels fast. " But Linda has promised that she would ring. "However," she says, "'it doesn't cost much when you just think that it's the other side of the world. It's only six pence per second . " "If you're on that telephone for less than one minute, I'll eat my hat,' David says, "And one minute's nearly four pounds. " "That's no more than you'd pay for a new hat," ''Linda answers. She has asked the man at the hotel desk to get her the number. The telephone rings. Linda picks it up. "Hello, Mum. Is that you ?" She says. "Six pence per second," David reminds her. "Hello, love. " It is Mrs Lee, Linda's mother, speaking from London. "I can hear you very clearly just like you are in the next room. It's a better line than when you called me from your office. Do you remember? I shouted at that time, and still you couldn't hear me sometimes. " "Yes, Mum. "Linda puts in. . "I just wanted to ring to ....... " "I remember how you rang when you went to Betty's house to eat, when you were a little girl. And then when you ..." Mrs Lee is a great talker "Nearly four pounds. " says David. Linda tries to tell her mother that it is time to say goodbye. "Yes, all right, "says Mrs Lee," But you will write, won't you, as you did when you were at work ..." Once again, Mrs Lee talks about the pass. and there is no stopping her. "Four pounds fifty, 'says David. At last, Linda cuts her mother short, promises to write, and rings off. "There! That wasn't long, was it ?" "Four pounds, ninety pence." David answers. "And you didn't even say that we've arrived." What are the answers to this following set of questions: 1. David and whom are traveling?
2. Who says "Four pounds, ninety pence."
3. Whos answers the phone?
4. who will eat a hat?
5. Who says bad news travels fast?
6. Who is at the hotel desk
7. Who shouted
8. What travels fast?
9. Who says hello love
10. Who says hello love
Answer:
1. Linda
2. David
3. Mrs Lee
4. unknown
5. He says
6. man
7. I
8. Bad news
9. Mrs Lee
10. Mrs Lee