The War on Antibiotics

Would you like some antibiotic-resistant bacteria with your grilled
chicken at your backyard barbeque? Of course not. But that likelihood
continues to grow unless the government makes industry change the way
most American farm animals are raised.

American industrial animal production has fed our farm animals a
steady diet of antibiotics for decades. Now, the bacteria are fighting
back and we're all paying the price.

An estimated 70 percent of all antibiotics (about 24.6 million
pounds a year) consumed in this country are used non-therapeutically to
help promote growth in our pigs, chickens, and cattle in overcrowded
pens known as "confined animal feeding operations" (CAFOs). Without
antibiotics added to their feed, disease would rapidly infect these
animals.

In these factory farms, bacteria are exposed to low levels of
antibiotics for long periods of time. That provides ideal conditions
for the creation of bacterial resistance. Many of the antibiotics used
to raise factory-farmed animals are the same prescription drugs that
doctors use to treat sick humans. Now, antibiotic resistance developed
in CAFOs is becoming a public health problem for us all.

The medical community has taken strong steps to reduce the
over-prescription of antibiotics to humans to slow the development of
these superbugs. But we can't win this battle without a similar effort
by meat and poultry companies.

Antibiotic resistance is already proving costly--at least $4 to $5
billion a year in health costs alone, according to an estimate from The
National Academy of Sciences. With few new antibiotics on the horizon,
protecting what we have is essential.

After dragging its feet for years, the government has finally taken
the first timid steps to address this crisis. The Food and Drug
Administration published
in June a draft of new guidelines for the meat and poultry industry.
The agency outlined a set of principles calling for the use of
antibiotics to be limited to treating animal disease and to include
veterinary oversight. FDA officials said these voluntary guidelines
laid the groundwork for possible future regulations. Unfortunately, the
agency sets no timeline for future regulations, which could be years,
even decades, in the making.

To protect America's health, Congress must accelerate action to
protect antibiotics. More than 80 of the nation's public health
organizations, including the American Medical Association and the
American Public Health Association, have endorsed a bill that would
halt of the overuse of antibiotics in raising food animals. The bill,
introduced by the only microbiologist in Congress, Rep. Louise
Slaughter (D-NY), would phase out the non-therapeutic use of seven
classes of antibiotics in animals--unless the FDA determines the drugs
do not contribute to antibiotic resistance affecting humans. The modest
bill would still allow farmers to treat sick animals and it only covers
antibiotics also used to treat humans.

But the big drug and meat companies represent a powerful lobby in
Washington, and have thus far blocked the bill and FDA action. Why are
they expending such effort to prevent this major public health
initiative? As usual, it has to do with the bottom line. Banning
antibiotics for healthy animals raised in extremely crowded conditions
would mean that chicken, cattle, and pigs would require more room. The
cost of producing beef, pork, and chicken would likely rise--although
it would be nothing compared to the health costs linked to
antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

The good news is that it doesn't have to be this way. We can raise
enough animals for food and still protect the effectiveness of
antibiotics. Denmark, the world's largest pork exporter, banned
antibiotic feed additives in 1998. Producers improved animal husbandry
and hygiene, and the overall use of antibiotics in agriculture dropped
by over 50 percent. A similar ban is now in place in the rest of
Europe. And of course many American farmers in the U.S. already use
these more sustainable practices, producing pork, chicken and livestock
without antibiotics.

Nearly all of us have needed antibiotics at some point in our lives.
If we want antibiotics to work for us and our children in the future,
we have to get smarter about how we use them. We need to find the
political will to act.