Drug Deals

I was designated handyman for the day, which made it go by rather fast. I was put in charge of sound-proofing an unused door, by placing foam panels on it, an am about 4/5 done with layer 1 of 2. (I ran out of caulking glue).
Legislatively speaking, I attended a great meeting on using antibiotics in animals for about an hour today. While I knew most of the information, it was great to see the American Veterinary Medical Association get together the agriculture staff to flight this bill. The current issue is that a bill, which has been beat in Congress twice before, is going to be reintroduced by Representative Louise Slaughter, to try to do what the European Union has already done with antibiotics, by eliminating most antibiotics labeled as "subtherapeutic" that are used in livestock. The reasoning Rep. Slaughter uses looks to be misguided, and from a political aspect and not from science, in my opinion. In Denmark's pork industry for example, while the overall use of antibiotics has dropped because of this, 30% to 40%, the use of the therapeutic drugs has increased over 130% because more applications are needed more often. This could create resistance faster as repetitions are increased. Behind all of the science, the moral of the story is, the drugs we have go through the same standards, plus two additional requirements, that the FDA puts human drugs through. While I do not know much about Rep. Slaughter myself, it would seems she lives in a relatively urban district, which could possibly be affected by higher food prices as one of the unforeseen risk to adopting this legislation.
Other than that, everything seems to have settled down, and I feel almost like a 'lifer', as they call them out here. Unfortunately my short stay has almost reached its halfway point, and sometime I think it will kick in that me being out here will probably be one of the best learning experiences of my academic career, no classes included.

Tonight, there was a nice reception held, so I snacked there and met some of the people of academia in the forestry industry. And before we left, we were warned that tomorrow may be a long day. We start setting up for our afternoon hearing at 9 am, and will have to set up for Thursday's hearing after a reception ends tomorrow night at 8 pm.