Antibiotic resistance is rapidly becoming a major health crisis in the United States, as a result of overuse of antibiotics in both human medicine and livestock production. However, according to analysis of U.S. Food & Drug Administration data by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, 80 percent of all antibiotics sold in the U.S. are used on animals. Farmers regularly administer low-dosages of antibiotics to accelerate growth or to prevent animals from getting sick due to unsanitary and crowded living conditions in factory farms.  However because antibiotics are so widely present on the farm, eventually most of the bugs that are vulnerable to the antibiotics are killed off, and only a very small handful of superbugs, ones that happen to be immune to the antibiotics, remain. The superbugs then flourish and spread. The problem of antibiotics resistance cannot be overcome without addressing the huge quantities of antibiotics used on livestock. The superbugs that are immune to antibiotics on the farm exchange genetic material with bacteria everywhere, leading to antibiotic resistance in hospitals and communities. Public health and environmental groups have sued FDA for its failure to act on antibiotics and the FDA has asked drug companies to voluntarily limit the use of certain antibiotics in animal feed, but many advocates feel that the voluntary standards don’t go far enough and want FDA to institute binding, mandatory, limits on the use of antibiotics that preserves the use of antibiotics for sick animals. In the meantime, consumer advocacy around meat, including public outcry to “pink slime,” has created a drumbeat around meat without drugs.

Recent Articles About Antibiotics

A New Year’s Resolution: Put Animals on an Antibiotics Diet

By on January 3, 2013

As Americans ring in the new year, many of us will resolve to get healthy. Meat and poultry producers can help — by making a resolution to put their farm animals on an antibiotics diet.

Antibiotics are lifesaving medicines. But overusing them can have unintended consequences. That’s what we’re seeing on industrial farms where these drugs are being used on a massive scale in a way that threatens the public’s health. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), nearly 30 million pounds of antibiotics are sold each year for use in food animal production, most often to make the animals grow faster and to compensate for overcrowded and unsanitary conditions. By comparison, drug makers sold about 7 million pounds of these products last year to treat sick people. Read more

ARS Highlights Alternatives to Antibiotics for Animal Agriculture

By on June 5, 2012

As concerns grow about antibiotic-resistant pathogens in our food, environment, and hospitals, the Agricultural Research Service is trying to figure out the best alternatives for food animal producers, who have long relied on these miracle drugs for combating diseases and boosting feed efficiency.

Though antibiotic resistance is a known consequence of antibiotic use in both humans and animals, agricultural use has come under greater scrutiny in recent years as more consumers take an interest in how their food is produced. According to the most recent estimates, around 80 percent of all antibiotics sold in the United States each year are used in food animal production. Read more

FDA Issues Voluntary Plan to Limit Antibiotics in Agriculture

By on April 12, 2012

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is taking its biggest step yet to rein in the indiscriminate use of antibiotics that help food animals grow bigger, faster. The agency said Wednesday it is asking veterinary drug makers to voluntarily phase out medically important drugs from being available over the counter in the hope that the shift will help combat growing antimicrobial resistance.

Under FDA’s proposal, these antimicrobials will still be allowed in animal agriculture but, if veterinary drug companies agree to change the labels, farmers will be allowed to use the drugs only to prevent, control, or treat diseases and under the supervision of a veterinarian and not for promoting growth or improving feed efficiency.

The agency said it was taking the voluntary action to “preserve the effectiveness of medically important antimicrobials for treating disease in humans.” Read more

It’s Plants’ Time in the Sun

By on July 15, 2011

How many times have you checked a food package to see where it was produced, wondering about all the energy it took to get from the farm to your fork? Once an issue that few people pondered, the “eat local” movement has inspired conscientious consumers all over the country to contemplate how we can each do better by the planet at meal-time. The issue’s gone so mainstream that even TIME magazine published a cover story a few years ago entitled, “Forget Organic—Eat Local.”

Well, according to a recent Harvard Business Review article, we would be wiser to reconsider the amount of meat products on our grocery list rather than merely looking for how many miles our food may have traveled.

How much more concerned should we be? A lot. Read more

Senate Bill Addresses Antibiotics in Animal Feed

By on June 21, 2011

A bipartisan group of senators re-introduced a bill late last week aimed at preserving the effectiveness of medically important antibiotics by limiting their use in food animal feed. In the face of the rising threat of antibiotic resistance, public health experts and activists have pushed for regulation to limit the subtherapeutic use of antibiotics in animal agriculture.

Recent estimates indicate around 80 percent of all antibiotics in the U.S. are given to food animals.

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), the primary sponsor of The Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, otherwise known as PAMTA, reintroduced the measure to address “the rampant overuse of antibiotics in agriculture that creates drug-resistant bacteria, an increasing threat to human beings.” Read more

Will the U.S. Hog Industry Ever Kick Its Reliance on Low-Dose Antibiotics?

By on April 7, 2011

The editors of Scientific American recently encouraged U.S. hog farmers to “follow Denmark and stop giving farm animals low-dose antibiotics.” Sixteen years ago, in order to reduce the threat of increased development of antibiotic resistant bacteria in their food system and the environment, Denmark phased in an antibiotic growth promotant ban in food animal production. Guess what? According to Denmark’s Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries the ban is working and the industry has continued to thrive. The government agency found that Danish livestock and poultry farmers used 37 percent less antibiotics in 2009 than in 1994, leading to overall reductions of antimicrobial resistance countrywide. Read more

Leading U.S. Food Service Provider Introduces Meatless Monday to Potentially Millions of Customers

By on January 26, 2011

The national non-profit Meatless Monday campaign is proving to be “The Little Engine That Could” in the environmental public health world. In just the last two years national awareness of Meatless Monday more than doubled. According to a commissioned survey by FGI Research more than 30 percent of Americans are aware of the public health campaign, compared to 15 percent awareness in 2008. No doubt the announcement last week that Sodexo, a food service company which serves more than ten million North American customers a day, has adopted the campaign will only help to increase Meatless Monday’s popularity. Read more

New FDA Numbers Reveal Food Animals Consume Lion’s Share of Antibiotics

By on December 23, 2010

Antibiotics, one of the world’s greatest medical discoveries, are slowly losing their effectiveness in fighting bacterial infections and the massive use of the drugs in food animals may be the biggest culprit. The growing threat of antibiotic resistance is largely due to the misuse and overuse of antibiotics in both people and animals, which leads to an increase in “super-bacteria.” But people use a much smaller portion of antibiotics sold in this country compared to the amount set aside for food animals.

In fact, according to new data just released by the FDA, of the antibiotics sold in 2009 for both people and food animals almost 80 percent were reserved for livestock and poultry. A huge portion of those antibiotics were never intended to fight bacterial infections, rather producers most likely administered them in continuous low-dosages through feed or water to increase the speed at which their animals grew. And that has many public health experts and scientists troubled. Read more

Straight Talk About the Risks of Feeding Antibiotics to Food Animals

By on October 5, 2010

It is time for some straight talk about the risks of using massive amounts of antibiotics in livestock and poultry. I don’t know one infectious disease expert who would disagree that there are direct links between antibiotic use in food animals and antibiotic resistance in people. Period. If you don’t believe me just ask Rear Admiral Ali Kahn, Assistant Surgeon General and Acting Deputy Director for the CDC’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Disease. Just this summer, during a hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Dr. Kahn testified that, “there is unequivocal evidence and relationship between [the] use of antibiotics in animals and [the] transmission of antibiotic-resistant bacteria causing adverse effects in humans.”

Knowing this, I continue to be frustrated with the fact that Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack does not publicly recognize that the industrial food animal production system is a leading contributor to the increase of antibiotic resistance in pathogens that infect people and animals. Earlier this month at a National Cattlemen’s Beef Association meeting, Vilsack responded to a question about the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (PAMTA) by saying the, “USDA’s public position is, and always has been, that antibiotics need to be used judiciously, and we believe they already are.” Read more