FDA is taking a no drug stance for livestock farmers who use antibiotics too freely in their day to day operations. Joshua M. Sharfstein, the FDA’s principal deputy commissioner, said antibiotics should only be used to treat disease and not to plump up bird breasts or help the animal digest feed more easily. “This is an urgent public health issue,” Sharfstein said during a press conference call, “To preserve the effectiveness [of antibiotics], we simply must use them as judiciously as possible.”
Brad Spellberg, an infectious-diseases specialist and the author of “Rising Plague,” a book about antibiotic resistance told the New York Times, “The writing is on the wall. …We’re in an era where antibiotic resistance is out of control, and we’re running out of drugs and new drugs are not being developed. We can’t continue along the path we’re on.”
For years, the animal feed industry has refused to accept responsibility for this serious problem, citing physicians as the primary cause. In fact in my book, a spokesperson for the National Chicken Council said, “the medical community sees a speck in the industry’s eyes, yet they can’t see the beam in their own.”
Now FDA says the beam belongs to the feed and farming industry and that if they don’t voluntarily change their ways, FDA will do it for them. The National Pork Producers Council said the FDA guidance was overly burdensome. “There is no scientific study linking antibiotic food use in food animal production with antibiotic resistance,” the council said in a statement.
Despite the Pork Council’s rhetoric, scientists have long known that antibiotics in livestock are contributing to antibiotic resistance in humans, but until now FDA wasn’t willing to take a stand. The problem of antibiotics in our food supply is insidious. Not only are antibiotics present in pork, poultry and beef in alarming levels, antibiotics from farming operations seep into ground water and even in end up in vegetables because of antibiotic tainted manure fertilizer. Louis Slaughter a Democrat from New York agrees, she proposed a bill to curb antibiotic use in farming.
Margaret Mellon of the Union of Concerned Scientists told the LA Times that it is doubtful the industry will voluntarily change its addictive ways. Mellon wants to see an action plan not just talk. Until then, if you want to change your buying habits, look for the following labels:
