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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