July 1, 2010: Antibiotics in Animals Need Limits
The New York Times
reports on June 29th that federal food regulators are taking steps toward
banning a common use of penicillin and tetracycline in the water and feed given
cattle, chickens and pigs in order to curtail the “growing scourge of killer
bacteria.”
The FDA
released a policy document on June 28th stating that agricultural uses of
antibiotics should be limited to assuring animal health, and that veterinarians
should be involved in the drugs’ uses. The FDA document does nothing to change
the present oversight of antibiotics, but suggests that the agency intends to
rejoin the battle to monitor agricultural uses of antibiotics that many
infectious disease experts oppose.
The Food
and Drug Administration has tried without success for more than three decades
to ban such uses but in the past Congress has stepped in at the urging of
agricultural interests and stopped the agency from acting.
About
100,000 people die every year from hospital-acquired infections caused by
bacteria that, because of overuse of antibiotics, have developed resistance to
the usual remedies and some experts think that a substantial number of deaths
can be attributed to agricultural uses of antibiotics.
Antibiotics
are used in agriculture for three reasons: to promote animal growth, prevent
illness and treat sickness. The industrialization of animal husbandry has
increased processors’ dependence on antibiotics because factory farm animals tend to be sicker and
feed-lot diets can encourage bacterial infections.
Many on
the industry’s side claim that most drug use is used to prevent disease while
critics say that drugs are too often used to promote growth in animals. The
distinction is important because FDA officials say they are mostly concerned
with the use of antibiotics to
promote growth rather than those that prevent or treat illnesses. If the agency
some day bans growth promotion as a use, there is a chance producers would
simply re-label such uses and say that the use is preventative.
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