The Food and Drug Administration issued a document Monday stating that antibiotics important for human health shouldn't be used to help animals grow faster. Officials say it's the beginning of a process to halt their use in meat production. But critics say the agency has made similar statements before, yet nothing came of it.
The concern is that overuse of antibiotics in animal feed could lead to antibiotic-resistant bacteria dangerous to humans.
"Because bacteria are so good at becoming resistant to antimicrobial drugs, it is essential that such drugs be used judiciously to delay the development of resistance," says Joshua Sharfstein, the FDA's principal deputy commissioner of food and drugs.
The draft guidance, published on the agency's website, also says that antibiotic use in animals should require veterinarian oversight. The public and industry will have 60 days to comment, and the FDA will then use those comments to consider its next move, Sharfstein says. "We're seeking guidance on how to achieve those principles."
However, public health advocates working to preserve the power of antibiotics say the FDA document is pretty much the same testimony Sharfstein gave before the House a year ago, with summaries of other reports tacked on.
"We were really disappointed because it's not really a plan for action," says Steven Roach, with Keep Antibiotics Working, a coalition of public health, consumer and animal welfare groups. "It describes what they would like to do, but they don't have any description of what they plan on doing or how they plan on doing it."
Low doses of antibiotics, more generically called antimicrobials, are given to animals either to make them grow more quickly or so they require less feed to get to market weight. They are commonly used in meat animals such as chickens, pigs and beef cattle, but not in milk cows or laying hens, because of restrictions on antibiotic residue in milk and eggs. In meat animals, the antibiotics must be stopped in time for the drugs to leave the animals' bodies.
The agency can either change its rules to end antibiotic use as a growth promoter, or get companies to do it voluntarily. "They're still trying to get the industry to make the problem go away voluntarily," Roach says. "The problem is the companies aren't going to voluntarily give up their profits."
The main classes of antimicrobials used in both humans and animals are macrolides and tetracyclines, Roach says.
Agency research shows "use of medically important drugs in food-producing animals should be limited," says Bernadette Dunham, director of the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine.
Meat producers dispute the idea. National Pork Producers Council president Sam Carney says the FDA "didn't present any science on which to base this."
House Rules Committee chairwoman Louise Slaughter, D-New York, said in a statement that "the only thing accomplished by pumping antibiotics into healthy animals is to dilute the effectiveness of our medicines."USA Today
