WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration will recommend new limits on antibiotics use in livestock, including that the drugs only be used to cure or prevent disease, the agency said in a notice on Monday.
The FDA issued guidance on its latest thinking on the issue and said it would accept public comments for 60 days. Industry response will help shape its next steps, and the FDA did not set a timeline for action.
"We're sort of setting the foundation where we could talk about regulation, talk about legislation," said Joshua Sharfstein, the FDA's principal deputy commissioner for food and drugs.
The limits, which would be phased in, are designed to respond to concerns that the routine use of antibiotics in livestock feed to spur growth and weight gain is leading to new strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
The FDA would require veterinarians to oversee the use of antibiotics in livestock, officials said.
"FDA thinks that using medically important antimicrobial drugs to increase production in food-producing animals is not a judicious use," the agency said in guidance posted on its website.
The new rules could affect major pharmaceutical companies that produce antibiotics used on farms such as Pfizer, Bayer AG, Merck & Co Inc, Novartis AG and Animal Health International.
The FDA said it is most concerned about the use of antibiotics that:
- were approved before 2003
- are used to increase production
- are available over-the-counter
- are given continuously to entire herds or flocks
The FDA said it would work with drug companies, the livestock industry and others and will try not to disrupt the industry.
Livestock groups have fought efforts to clamp down on their use of antibiotics, saying there is no scientific evidence that their use of antibiotics cause a problem.
"We've said that there needs to be some science before you go banning antibiotics that are important to food-animal production," said Dave Warner, a spokesman for the National Pork Producers Council, on Monday.
In its draft guidance, the FDA cited 15 studies going back as far as 1969 that highlight concerns about the use of antibiotics in agriculture.
An estimated 70 percent of all antibiotics sold in the United States are fed to healthy animals to promote weight gain, according to a past study by the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Nearly a year ago, Sharfstein said restrictions on livestock use would preserve the potency of antibiotics and the drugs should be used only to cure or prevent disease in livestock. Legislation to ban subtherapeutic use of antibiotics is stalled in Congress.
(Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton, Christopher Doering and Susan Heavey; Editing by David Gregorio)Reuters
