http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/50556/title/Another_livestock_drug_endangers_vultures
This article is focused on the cattle that farmers raise in South Asia and how a pain killer used on cattle affects vultures that live in that area. Since the 1990’s, diclofenec, an anti-inflammatory, has been used on cattle and since then, vultures have been dying off since the drug is poisonous when they eat the cattle carcass. Conversationists recently had tried a new anti-inflammtory drug, kitoprofen. Scientist had just recently given a direct dose of kitoprofen and meals of carcasses from recently dosed cattle. This test was given to the two other species of voltures in Africa; the direct doses given killed the voltures as did the recently dosed carcasses.
Vultures are a vital importance to the farmers that work around that area by eating the carcasses. A local farmer noticed the population of the vultures decreasing too, “Dozens of the birds could clean up a dead animal in 20 minutes. Now you’ve got a rancid cow sitting there for weeks,” he said. Packs of wild dogs have taken the job of cleaning up but the problem with that is the concern about rabies exposed to more people. Since then, India, Pakistan and Nepal have banned the manufacture of diclofenac for animals in their countries. But since diclofenac is used for humans too so the farmers just buy the drug that its packaged for humans and use it on the animals. In North America, farmers have started using meloxicam – which is vulture friendly. The vultures who live in North America however are not as closly related to the ones in South Asia, but scientist are testing it out now.
I thought this article was very easy to understand as well as interesting. Although, I didn’t like that the fact that the article didn’t show the rate at which the South Asia vultures population has been declining. Before I read this article, I never knew that vultures had such an important role in a farmer’s business. I now have a new understanding and respect for the vultures that live in South Asia.
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I read Audrey's review of the article "Another Livestock Drug Endangers Vultures." I liked how she gave a very clear explanation of the problem. I also liked how she was very clear and explained things well. Her review of the article was very good. However, Audrey didn't explain how the wild dogs were so dangerous to humans very well. Also, she didn't explain why the vultures were affected by the drug.
ReplyDeleteI would like to find out if any other reigons of the world are having similar problems.
Three things about this article Audrey did well were, she showed great knowledge of her topic with a good amount of details and also picked an interesting article. Two things that would have made this article better were if she specified where they were making the drug the drugs properties. I also did not know that there were drugs like this on the market that were being knowingly given to animals.
ReplyDeleteLouis Florio
Audrey did a good job in introducing this article, by providing us with a short history lesson, so we could take the information in perspective to today. It is obvious that she took meticulous care in transferring the ideas from her article to the review so that we can understand the premise. I did not understand why farmers would want to save the vulture population and I am glad that she illuminated this issue for me. I also approve very much of her analysis of the article, because she brought up one point of information that she wished to know and had been omitted in the article. I felt that this additional fact would have been beneficial to my understanding as well and if she had not mentioned it in her last paragraph I would have penalized her for what was really the article's faults.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of negativity, all I have to say is that the grammar and spelling are not to par. What really irked me was her spelling of 'volture' as 'vulture.' In terms of grammar, there are a lot of sentence fragments or phrases inserted where they don't make sense. These problems hindered my ability to interpret the review properly, because I would have to keep doubling back and re-reading.
Overall, I think she chose a great article to review, interesting and relevant and although the review itself contained some technical errors I can forgive that, because I was able to learn from this review about a prime example of how our aim for agriculture advancement affects the environment.
I thought Audrey’s review; "Another Livestock Drug Endangers Vultures" was overall very good. First of all I like how she gave us some background information so that we would understand the topic better. I also liked how she seemed to simplify what the article said to make it easy to read and understand for us. Lastly I think she showed a lot of knowledge of her topic and did a good job in explaining it carefully.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I think Audrey could have improved was her explanation in how these vultures get these drugs in the first place and why they are so dangerous to humans. Also she had a few major spelling errors, for example vulture is not spelled 'volture'.
Overall, I think she picked an interesting article to write a review on, it is a very relevant topic that obviously affects many people. In the future I would like to find out if there is a chance this could happen in other places.