by
Andrew Martin, Washington Bureau.
A coalition of public health and environmental groups on Thursday called on the Food and Drug Administration to ban seven classes of antibiotics from animal feed, saying their widespread use was contributing to antibiotic resistance among humans. In a formal petition to the FDA, the groups alleged that the widespread use of antibiotics in animal feed to promote growth and prevent disease violates the FDA's own safety criteria for protecting human health. The filing of the petition coincided with bipartisan legislation introduced Thursday in Congress that in two years would phase out the use of the seven antibiotics classes in animal feed. Two previous efforts to pass the legislation have failed. "These antibiotic feed additives aren't used to treat sick animals," said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. "They are put into feed for non-therapeutic purposes, that is, to make animals grow a little faster, and to compensate for the crowded, stressful and often unhygienic conditions at the industrial-style facilities where most food animals in the U.S. are now raised. "They should only be used when absolutely necessary," he said. The American Academy of Pediatrics, Environmental Defense, Food Animal Concerns Trust and the Union of Concerned Scientists joined the American Public Health Association in filing the petition. Resistance a concern The petition comes at a time of increasing concern about antibiotic resistance and its impact on human health. The problem has been caused, according to the FDA's Web site, by antibiotic use in livestock and by patients taking antibiotics more often than is warranted by federal and health guidelines. The result is that some bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics; consequently, some infections are becoming more difficult and expensive to treat, a problem that is particularly dangerous for children, the elderly and people with weakened immune systems. An estimated 70 percent of all antibiotics used in the United States are fed to farm animals, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental advocacy group. The antibiotic-resistant bacteria from farm animals can reach humans through direct contact with the animals, residue left on meat or water or crops contaminated with animal waste. The petition cites an FDA guidance document, released in late 2003, that recommends ways for the feed industry to evaluate the impact of animal drugs on human health. According to the document, "FDA considers an antimicrobial new animal drug to be `safe' if it concludes that there is reasonable certainty of no harm to human health from the proposed use of the drug in food producing animals." 7 antibiotics classes listed The seven classes of antibiotics listed in the petition, including penicillins and tetracyclines, are used in animal feed and deemed "critically important" or "highly important" to human health by the FDA. Using such drugs on livestock is considered medium- or high-risk, according to the FDA guidance document. Karen Florini, a senior attorney at Environmental Defense, said the guidance document recommends that only drugs that are considered low-risk should be used on a herdwide or flockwide basis, as opposed to being used to treat individual animals for a particular illness. As a result, she said, the FDA's guidance document is inconsistent with its approval of these antibiotics for animal use, which were made decades before. FDA officials could not be reached to comment on the requested ban of the antibiotics' use. However, the FDA wrote letters last summer to several animal-drug manufacturers suggesting that their claims that certain antibiotics would increase the rate of weight gain and "feed efficiency" were not an appropriate use of the drugs. The letters were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the Food Animal Concerns Trust, which promotes animal welfare in agriculture. Ron Phillips, a spokesman for the Animal Health Institute, which represents manufacturers of animal-health products, dismissed the petition as nothing new. "Antibiotics are used to keep animals healthy," he said. Phillips said the FDA guidance document laid out a process for the agency to review all animal drugs, and the letters to animal-drug manufacturers simply reflect that process, which is ongoing. ajmartin@tribune.com Chicago Tribune
