GoWyo said:
JDM said it was a "sale heifer." If it is one for sale, then there is a question of whether it is ethical to tranq it and not disclose to buyer that the animal goes nuts in the grooming chute. That being said, with as many cattle as ACE has been used on it would seem that it has been thoroughly tested enough to pass AMDUCA and ELDU by now. Have there ever been clinical studies on ACE in cattle? Maybe it is the variability of dosage that prevents labeling for use in cattle.
DL, can you enlighten us on why ACE is not approved for cattle from a vet medicine standpoint rather than the legal labeling standpoint, which most people are aware of?
Toxicology and residue studies for any kind of drug are very expensive to conduct. There has to be a need from a potential large customer volume to justify such a study. There isn't nearly enough of a need for use of tranquilizers in cattle to justify the expense to the drug companies to do it. So, you'll never see those studies done.
The particular exception I wish would get made would be for drugs approved for use in humans. For example - thorazine. I don't see why the regs couldn't be modified to allow use of human grade drugs in food animals - if it doesn't make you sick taking it directly it certainly isn't going to make you sick by the time it goes through another animal before it you ate it. I know there could be possible exceptions related to allergic reactions, etc, but you are talking about managing risk which would be infinitely small under even worse case scenarios. Again, there isn't enough of a need to justify the effort for the regulators to even look at it.