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.”

“The effectiveness of antibiotics for humans is jeopardized when they are used to fatten healthy pigs or speed the growth of chickens,” said Senator Feinstein.  “This is a basic food safety initiative that would phase out the misuse of these drugs so that food in supermarkets across America will not spread strains of drug-resistant bacteria.”

Senators Susan Collins (R-ME), Jack Reed (D-RI), Barbara Boxer (D-CA), all collaborated on the legislation.

According to Feinstein’s office, in 2010, the senator was contacted by the Don family of Ramona, California.  Their son, Carlos, “a bright and athletic 12-year old,” became gravely ill with an infection while at summer camp and did not respond to antibiotics.

“It took doctors 48 hours to find a medication that could kill the Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, that had infected his body.  By that time, Carlos’ lungs, kidneys, liver, intestine and heart had failed.  With only some brain activity left, Carlos lost his life because the antibiotics that hospitals have relied on for 80 years no longer worked,” said Feinstein’s office in a statement late last week.

“No parent should ever undergo the heartbreak and the tragedy that the Don’s went through,” said Feinstein.  “My bill makes important changes to the use of antibiotics and ensures that operations on a farm do not negatively impact the health and well being of families across the nation.”

The bill Feinstein is championing, PAMTA, mirrors a bill introduced by Congresswoman Louise Slaughter (D-NY), the only microbiologist serving in Congress. The legislation:

– Phases out the non-therapeutic use of medically important antibiotics in livestock;
– Requires new applications for animal antibiotics to demonstrate the use of the antibiotic will not endanger public health;
– Does not restrict the use of antibiotics to treat sick livestock or to treat pets.

“PAMTA will limit the agricultural use of seven types of antibiotics that have been identified by the Food and Drug Administration as critically important in human medicine to ensure that antibiotic-resistance is not inadvertently accelerated,” according to Feinstein’s office.

The Senate version of the legislation has 17 cosponsors and the House version has 60. Slaughter has been introducing a version of the bill since 2007.

The animal agriculture industry maintains that antibiotics are a critical tool for preventing disease and promoting animal health and welfare, casting doubt on the link between the sector’s use of antibiotics and human health issues.

Originally published on Food Safety News

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.”

That quote had me scratching my head when I read it in a New York Times Op-Ed a couple of weeks ago. The Times’ editors interpreted the statement as saying Vilsack believes there is no need to change antibiotic use policy among food animal producers. That contradicts the positions of both the FDA and CDC. The Times pointed out that while neither regulatory agency is doing enough to address the problem both, at least, recognize that current antibiotic use should change.

Congresswoman Louise Slaughter (D-NY) and Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), the primary sponsors of PAMTA, which calls for limits on the non-therapeutic use of certain antibiotics in livestock production, were perplexed with Secretary Vilsack’s comment too.  They recently requested that Vilsack clarify his stance on the issue. In a letter, Slaughter and Feinstein wrote:

Media reports suggest that you may have mischaracterized our legislation and made statements that run contrary to previous positions taken by Department officials. We hope that you can provide us with reassurance that your off-the-cuff remarks were taken out of context, and that you remain committed to protecting human and animal health.

I called the Secretary’s office for a clarification myself. A USDA spokesperson sent me the following statement:

USDA believes that antibiotic use should be used judiciously to slow the development of resistance in animals. USDA believes livestock producers are good stewards, use antibiotics judiciously, but there are some bad actors, and continued use can develop resistance. USDA wants to be a partner with Congress, producers and other federal partners to address this important issue.

This statement does little to address the issue at hand. The problem does not lie with a few rogue producers. Rather, there is a currently FDA-approved industry standard of feeding livestock and poultry low concentrations of antibiotics and other antimicrobials–including arsenic-based treatments–in their feed to promote growth. Considering industry produces more than 10 billion food animals a year (the majority chicken and hogs) the amount of antibiotics used in food animals is astronomical. Case in point, researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health estimate that the amount of antibiotics North Carolina hog producers use in their swine feed every year exceeds the total amount of antibiotics used to treat infections in people nationwide. It is estimated that as much as 70 percent of the antimicrobial drugs used in the US are administered to animals not to treat disease, but to purportedly promote growth or prevent the spread of pathogens among livestock and poultry living in intensive confinement.

All uses of antibiotics contribute to drug resistance.  While human medicine plays a large role in the antibiotic drug resistance problem, new research is clearly showing that resistant bugs from food animals are starting to show up in people more and more.  Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Hershey Medical Center researchers recently published a study that confirms other research indicating that hospitals are no longer the main source of exposure for methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA.  And researchers in Europe have published evidence that livestock production is increasingly becoming a major source for the Super Staph bug.

The reason why PAMTA is focusing on the non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in animals is that it is contrary to everything we have known for 70 years about preserving these drugs.  The amounts of antibiotics used in animal feeds are low and are not intended to kill bacteria.  That creates a problem first recognized by the inventor of penicillin, Alexander Fleming, who warned in 1945 that, “the greatest possibility of evil in self-medication is the use of too small doses so that instead of clearing up infection, the microbes are educated to resist penicillin.” Many infectious disease experts believe that we may very well be close to a post-antibiotic era, which could mean a return to a time when a simple bacterial infection could cause your child, your parents or you serious health problems or even death.

In their letter to Secretary Vilsack, Senator Feinstein and Congresswoman Slaughter tried to clear up what they call common misconceptions about their legislation:

The Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act does not ban the use of antibiotics. And in fact we share your belief banning all uses of antibiotics would be counterproductive. Instead, the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act addresses usage of seven antibiotics that are critical in human medicine, phasing them out for non-therapeutic uses in livestock production.

While I support the proposed legislation to limit antibiotic use in food animals, I have continually made it clear that the current language in PAMTA should be stronger.  I believe the concession to only focus on the so-called “seven antibiotics that are critical in human medicine” weakens the bill. If we are going to be up front with the public, we must make it clear that bacteria don’t differentiate between types of antibiotics, whether they are approved for human medicine or not.

Dr. Ellen Silbergeld, professor of environmental health sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, recently testified before Pennsylvania’s state legislature regarding its own proposed legislation to limit antibiotic use in food animals. She warned that, “bacteria respond to chemical structures, not brand names, and resistance to one member of a pharmaceutical class results in cross resistance to all other members of the same class.” For example, she noted that resistance in campylobacter (a nasty bug that the USDA says is the second most frequently reported cause for foodborne illness) to the antibiotic enrofloxicin (an antibiotic approved for pets and other domestic animals, commonly called Baytril) results in resistance to the very important human therapeutic antibiotic ciprofloxacin. Both antibiotics are two of more than 30 variations of the fluroquinolone class of antibiotics. As Silbergeld explains when bacteria develop resistance to one member of that class of antibiotics it can be resistant to all.

Authors made certain that language in PAMTA would ensure that any, “derivative of a drug that is used in humans or intended for use in humans to treat or prevent disease or infection caused by microorganisms,” would be banned from being used as a growth promoter in food animals. But–and this is a big “but”–the bill does not address the fact that the use of any antibiotic can lead to a pool of resistance that can affect every antibiotic class–important to both human and animal medicine.

Silbergeld has long warned that antibiotic resistant bacteria can share the genes (bits of DNA) that code for resistance with other bacteria in the environment and therefore readily transfer antibiotic resistance.  Sharing genes between bacteria is almost as easy for these organisms as forwarding an email to a friend; only bacteria are exchanging genetic code information. Resistance genes for multiple classes of antibiotics can be shared in the same “email,” or what scientists call plasmid “cassettes.”  For instance, some isolates of Salmonella and Campylobacter have been found to have taken up a “cassette” of resistance genes that protect them from as many as 17 different antibiotic drugs.

What this means is that not only can bacteria share resistance genes within the same class of antibiotics such as the fluoroquinolines class antibiotics containing enrofloxicin (restricted for veterinary use) and ciprofloxacin (critical to human medicine), but also bacteria have the capability of exchanging resistance genes between different classes of antibiotics like we’ve seen in Salmonella and Campylobacter. Allowing the non-therapeutic use of any antibiotic in food animals, regardless of whether it is defined as important to human medicine or not, could still lead to the development of bacteria that are resistant to an antibiotic that you and I may one day depend on.

The concept behind PAMTA is an important one. We must stop wasting one of medicine’s most important lifesaving discoveries simply as a way to increase the growth of food animals and subsequently profit for the food industry. If PAMTA is not passed this year I hope that the next version would follow more closely the recommendations from the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production’s final report, which calls for “the phasing out and then banning the non-therapeutic use of [ALL] antimicrobials in food animal production.”

Leadership at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made it abundantly clear last week that the low-dose usage of antibiotics in food animals, simply to promote growth or improve feed efficiency, needlessly contributes to the emergence of antibiotic resistant bacteria and poses a serious threat to public health. Despite the fact that the FDA is taking a hard-line stance on the issue, I find it frustrating to see that the agency appears to be hamstrung from taking the necessary steps to mandate industry to end the risky practice. Even more exasperating, is that it appears that the FDA may actually relax a current directive that already regulates antibiotic use. However, unlike many critics I don’t believe that this is an example of the Obama administration buckling under industry pressure. Rather, I view it as a loud and stern call for Congress to take action. Producers concerned more about profit than protecting public health are not going to cut their dependence on non-therapeutic antibiotic use in food animals unless lawmakers pass strict legislation.

Last week, the FDA fired a serious warning shot across the bow of industrial food animal producers stating in a new draft guidance that it expects industry to change its antibiotic use practices. The draft guidance asks for two simple things: stop using “medically important” antibiotics as growth promoters, limiting use to only treating sick animals; and ensure that producers do not administer these drugs without veterinary supervision. Unfortunately, the FDA says guidance documents, “do not establish legally enforceable responsibilities.” Why didn’t leadership go a step further and issue a proposed rule? I’ll address the possible answer in a moment. But what has me scratching my head are discussions about potentially changing a current medicated animal feed rule that’s already on the books.

The FDA recently sent out a notice warning that it might modify its veterinary feed directive (VFD), citing informal complaints that the rule is “overly burdensome.” The VFD was issued 10 years ago in response to the passage of the Animal Drug Availability Act of 1996, which required the FDA to regulate the approval and marketing of new animal drugs and medicated feeds. Any medicated feed that falls under the VFD category can only be used under the supervision of a veterinarian. According to the American Veterinary Medical Association’s website “the purpose of the added professional control is to reduce the rate of development of [antimicrobial] resistance and thereby prolong the period of effectiveness of the medication.” It is important to note that the VFD only applies to new drugs and that feeds containing approved antibiotics before 2000 can and are sold over-the-counter without a prescription or supervision of a veterinarian.

So, if the FDA Principal Deputy Commissioner Joshua Sharfstein went out on a limb to call the overuse of antibiotics in food animals, “an urgent public health issue,” why would FDA consider changing a 10-year-old rule that could relax regulation of antibiotic use even further? That’s exactly what the American Academy of Pediatrics, The Pew Charitable Trusts, Union of Concerned Scientists, Institute for Agriculture and Trade, Food and Animal Concerns Trust and Humane Society of the United States want to know. Back in May the organizations sent a list of specific questions to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg regarding the Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR):

·      From whom did the [overly burdensome] comments come – the industrial farming industry, veterinarians, or other stakeholders?

·      The FDA suggests that the ANPR is being undertaken to help “improve the program’s efficiency.” Since the primary requirement of the program is that veterinarians provide oversight on the use of certain drugs, does improved program efficiency simply mean less meaningful oversight from licensed veterinarians?

·      How is the ANPR consistent with Deputy Commissioner Joshua Sharfstein’s July 13, 2009, testimony that, “protecting public health requires the judicious use in animal agriculture of those antimicrobials of importance in human medicine…FDA also believes that use of medications for prevention and control should be under the supervision of a veterinarian?” (emphasis added)

Late last month the FDA decided to extend the comment period on the ANPR for an additional 60 days, after receiving complaints that the original 90-day comment period was not enough time to develop “meaningful or thoughtful response.”  That means the public now has until August 27 to speak up. If you’re interested in writing a response you may first want to read a new study published in PLoS One which links antibiotic use on veal calf farms in the Netherlands to a new strain of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus – ST398 (a.k.a. Staph superbug.) The authors say this is the first study that shows “direct association between animal and human carriage of ST398,” and that this latest revelation warrants the prudent use of antibiotics on the farm.

While I don’t want to see the VFD weakened in any way, I am more concerned about the medicated feeds that are not covered under the directive. Which is pretty much everything except the two drugs that have been placed under the VFD category. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) estimated in 2001 that as much as 70 percent of all the antibiotics sold in the U.S. were used to promote growth in food animals. And yes, there are plenty of cases of irresponsible antibiotic use going on in people, but it doesn’t compare to the amount in animals. The UCS claims “nearly 13 million pounds [of antibiotics] per year – are used in animal agriculture for these non-therapeutic purposes. This amount is estimated to be more than four times the amount of drugs used to treat human illness.”

Of course industry disputes this claim. The Animal Health Institute – an organization that lobbies for pharmaceutical companies such as Bayer, Pfizer and Novartis – told the New York Times that it estimated only “13 percent of agricultural antibiotics were used to promote growth.” As Times reporter Gardiner Harris keenly pointed out, if the FDA, “some day bans growth promotion as a use, there is a chance producers would simply relabel such uses as preventative.”

While serving as the communications director for the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production my colleagues and I met with AHI staff in 2006 to discuss antibiotic use in food animals. They were trying to “redefine” therapeutic and non-therapeutic uses of antibiotics even back then.  They presented us with similar statistics. It wasn’t until we started discussing the use of antibiotics to prevent production diseases, such as liver abscesses in feedlot cattle (ruminants, designed to eat forage such as grass or hay, that are finished on grain can develop several metabolic and infectious diseases), that we began to realize they were lumping the use of antibiotics to make up for poor living conditions and animal husbandry in the same therapeutic category. There are some hard-liners who would argue medicating animals to prevent “production diseases” should not fall under the “therapeutic” category as well. Keep in mind, regardless of the definition, these low-dose treatments can still lead to the emergence of antibiotic resistant bacteria. And FYI, studies reveal cattle switched from grain-based diets to hay were less likely to shed the deadly antibiotic resistant bacteria E. coli O157:H7.

So, why hasn’t the FDA called for an outright ban? Industry has thwarted the agency’s attempts to end the non-therapeutic use of antibiotics for more than three decades. If history were any indicator, a call for a new ban would most likely end with the same fate. I am certain that if FDA leadership decided to release a draft directive last week, rather than a draft guidance, industry would already be preparing to take the FDA to court. At best, a court action could tie up any rule for years; at worst, it could set back future regulations by another decade or more. That’s why public health will remain at risk until Congress takes action and passes legislation designed to end the practice once and for all.

While it is not perfect, there is proposed legislation on the table right now entitled the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (PAMTA). Congresswoman Louise Slaughter introduced the latest version of PAMTA last March. The bill calls for:

·      Phase out the non-therapeutic use in livestock of medically important antibiotics;

·      Require this same tough standard of new applications for approval of animal antibiotics;

·      Does not restrict use of antibiotics to treat sick animals or to treat pets and other animals not used for food.

More than 300 organizations including the Center for a Livable Future, American Public Health Association, American Medical Association, and National Association of County and City Health Officials support the passage of the PAMTA.

The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) is vehemently opposed to PAMTA. Dr. Michael Blackwell, public health veterinarian and vice chair of the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, says that to his knowledge, “the AVMA remains the only major medical or public health organization not recommending changes in agriculture practices to help ensure sustainability where the use of antimicrobials is concerned.”

Dr. Raymond Tarpley, AVMA member and retired Texas A&M professor, recently submitted a post for the Livable Future Blog imploring the AVMA to change its stance on antimicrobial use in food animals. The AVMA and industrial food animal producers claim that the benefits of low-dose antibiotic use to efficient production and food safety outweigh the risk of developing more antibiotic resistance. Dr. Tarpley says that view, however, is only valid in the context of the current unhealthy industrial animal production environment:

… where disease risks can be heightened and growth rate performance reduced by stressors such as poor ventilation and hygiene, inadequate temperature regulation and animal crowding interfering with natural behaviors. Elevated risks have led to a dependence on low-dose antimicrobials to compensate for these suboptimal husbandry practices made worse by large numbers of animals producing large quantities of untreated wastes that often trigger respiratory distress in a microbially rich environment.

When it comes to the FDA’s draft guidance on antibiotic use in food animals, the fact that FDA leadership is willing to take a hard-line stance on such a politically charged issue is commendable. I understand the argument that change takes time and that the agency must be methodical in its approach, especially when the powerful food animal and pharmaceutical industries will do everything they can to thwart it. However, timing is everything. If the FDA believes it cannot take a stronger stance now, then Congress must move on PAMTA. As Congress faces another potential shift in control, if PAMTA fails passage this year, I fear it could be another decade before we see an end to the irresponsible use of antibiotics in animal agriculture, and by then it might be too little too late.

Katie Couric’s special report on the use of antibiotics in animal agriculture aired in two parts this week, exposing the intransigence of the industry.

In the report, Couric visits a confinement pig operation, where she speaks to a farmer who believes using antibiotics is necessary. She talks to victims of MRSA, a bacteria infection that is resistant to antibiotics. And she visits similar hog confinement operations in Denmark that are taking care of their animals without the use of antibiotics. The Danish are proud to have transitioned, and scientists go on the record to talk about the decrease in antibiotic resistance in humans since the ban in that country. At the end of the second segment, Couric is in a giant broad-breasted white turkey operation that has been antibiotic-free for 14 years–a barn filled with hundreds of birds that I would describe as crowded, and yet the farmer has managed to turn a better profit than he did using antibiotics.

Meanwhile, a veterinarian from the National Pork Board denies that antibiotics are being overused, and argues that costs for the farmer go up prohibitively when animals are given more space and not given antibiotics, and framed the cheap cost as a benefit for the consumer. However, at an extra cost of .05 cents per pound, Dr. Ellen Silbergeld argues its a price worth paying. What the National Pork Board neglects to mention is that on average, the consumer is willing to pay .20 cents more per pound for pork without antibiotics, increasing profits for farmers.

Farmers running these huge operations are in a difficult position, pinched by small margins and industry contracts that force them into debt to meet standards for confinement operation barns and equipment. They need more help to understand why the transition to antibiotic-free is actually better for them financially and health-wise in the long term.

Couric also interviews Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein, the principle deputy commissioner of the FDA, who said, “The overuse of antibiotics on farms does pose a risk to human health.” He also spoke strongly for a ban on non-therapeutic antibiotic use in hearings on Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (PAMTA).  Perhaps Couric’s reporting will give congress an additional push to pass PAMTA.

Here’s part 1:

Part 2:

Last Sunday, investigative reporter for the New York Times Michael Moss took a hard look at a hamburger contaminated with e. coli, following the elaborate path it took from multiple cows and slaughterhouses and through various processes to one of the victim’s plates, a 22-year old dance instructor, now paralyzed, named Stephanie Smith. The piece was a shocker because it showed just how unaccountable these companies have become in the face of an often powerless and conflicted USDA. The piece is still on the most-emailed list of the NYT website as of this writing, it pushed Tyson into a deal with Costco over testing, and it is even being discussed in Washington, according to a follow-up piece featured today by Moss.

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack responded to the article right away, adding later that the Obama administration was going to ask congress for legislation that would allow the USDA to conduct mandatory recalls — a crucial first step in making sure fewer people fall ill after eating contaminated meat.

Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), chairwoman of the Agriculture Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee sent a letter to Secretary Vilsack, and spoke on the record for Moss, agreeing that indeed the USDA did face a conflict of interest. She was quoted as saying:

“The U.S.D.A. is supposed to be protecting public health and at the same time be promoting agricultural products, and my view is that those two things don’t mix.”

Representative Louise Slaughter (D-NY), chairwoman of the Rules Committee, read parts of Sunday’s article on the floor of the House on Wednesday, and spoke about how these pathogens in our meat and antibiotics were effecting our ability to export our meat to Europe. She is the author of a bill called the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (which we wrote about here), that seeks to limit the non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in animal agriculture, something that has successfully been done in Europe. We give 70% of our antibiotics to animals in this country in order to keep them in close confinement. (We have written about antibiotics and confinement operations in various ways here at Civil Eats: possible links to swine flu, the work ahead for Obama’s Food Safety Working Group, on how we treat the animals we eat, and the case for regulating confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs).)

The success of this article shows that the public is eager to be more informed on these issues, and that Washington and corporations act differently when held accountable. Congratulations to Michael Moss for the successful story, and to the New York Times for taking on reporting on our broken food system.

Photo: Obamafoodorama

For public health advocates, the fact that the FDA is officially linking antimicrobial resistance to animal agriculture is worthy of celebration, considering industry lobbyists successfully bullied the FDA under the Bush Administration to look the other way and tried to sweep the unsavory facts under the rug for years. Not surprisingly, Dave Warner a spokesperson for the National Pork Producers Council told the New York Times:

“there are no good studies that show that some of these antibiotic-resistant diseases… have any link to antibiotic use in food-animal production.”

The NYT obviously didn’t do any digging on this, because they could have called Warner out on his claim. Maybe both the NYT and Warner could learn a great deal from Dr. Frederick Angulo over at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Angulo knows a little bit about infectious diseases. He’s a medical epidemiologist trained in veterinary medicine and human public health. Angulo serves as the CDC’s Deputy Chief of the Enteric Diseases Epidemiology Branch in Atlanta. He’s considered to be a world-renowned expert in foodborne and waterborne diseases. Just recently the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association quoted him as saying:

“There is scientific consensus that antibiotic use in food animals contributes to resistance in humans,” Dr. Angulo said. “And there’s increasing evidence that such resistance results in adverse human health consequences at the population level. Antibiotics are a finite and precious resource, and we need to promote prudent and judicious antibiotic use.”

Antibiotic resistance may sound like a new issue to many Americans, but believe it or not it’s been a concern almost since Dr. Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928. During his 1945 Nobel Prize lecture, Fleming warned about the dangers of resistance:

“It is not difficult to make microbes resistant to penicillin in the laboratory by exposing them to concentrations not sufficient to kill them, and the same thing has occasionally happened in the body.”

The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that as much as 70% of all the antimicrobials produced in the U.S. are given to food animals. Millions of pounds of antimicrobials are administered each year at low doses to these animals, usually in their feed. So it’s not surprising that we’re finding antimicrobial resistant bugs like MRSA, better known as the flesh-eating bacteria, or resistant forms of Campylobacter, E. coli and Salmonella on the meats that we buy in the grocery store and floating around in the environment. Big Ag advocates claim that the proposed ban is going to backfire and we’ll end up with even more sick food animals and force farmers to treat them with antibiotics anyway. Many, like Congressman Leonard Boswell (D-IA) point to examples in Denmark, where a ban enacted more than a decade ago initially increased the mortality of piglets and the need to treat them with antibiotics. But as Robert Martin, former executive director for the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, testified, what the industry seems to ignore (or doesn’t want the public to know) is that once Danish hog farmers improved their production practices, “including better ventilation in the barns, more space provided for the animals, and more frequent cleaning of the barns,” the mortality rates quickly declined to pre-ban numbers.

Two Danish scientists, Dr. Frank Møller Aarestrup and Dr. Henrik Wegener, from the National Food Institute at the Technical University of Denmark submitted written testimony to the Rules Committee in effort to “set the record straight.” Drs. Aarstrup and Henrick said “representatives of organizations funded by U.S. agri-business have criticized and mis-represented the facts on the Danish ban of antibiotics since its inception.” In fact, according to their soon to be published study on the “Danish experience,” over the long-term, significantly reducing the use of antimicrobials actually increased swine productivity.

Lawmakers, like Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Congresswoman Slaughter have been introducing forms of PAMTA for almost a decade now. From the beginning, organizations like the American Public Health Association, American Medical Association, Consumers Union and the Center for Science in the Public Interest recognized the need to restrict the constant low dosage use of antibiotics in agriculture. Each year, provisions in the legislation varied, but each version proposed banning the use of antibiotics important to human health from being used in food animals and to restrict the use of other antibiotics.

While many health advocates applaud lawmakers for introducing PAMTA, there are some who believe the legislation should be stronger. Martin was invited to Monday’s hearing to present the Pew Commission’s findings and recommendations on how to tackle the antibiotic resistance threat posed by animal agriculture. The Commission goes a few steps further than PAMTA. Rather than limiting the ban to the 7 classes of antibiotics important to human health, the Commission recommended a ban on the non-therapeutic use of all antibiotics and other antimicrobials, like ionophores, that have the potential to lead to the increase of antimicrobial resistant bacteria in the environment. Ionophores are made up of organic compounds that have antibiotic properties. Instead of using fungus based antibiotics ionophores are commonly added to feed to kill single-cell parasites that infest the intestinal tracts of animals. You might remember Tyson Foods got into a little hot water a few years ago for labeling its chicken antibiotic-free despite the fact it was still treating its birds with ionophores. While the use of ionophores continues to add to the ever-increasing “reservoir of antimicrobial resistance,” the USDA says the use of the compounds, “…does not necessarily lead to other types of antibiotic resistance.” What led scientists to couch their conclusion was that they did find that the use could lead to resistance in bacitracin, which is commonly found in antibiotic ointments, like Neosporin, used to treat skin and eye infections.

Robert Martin says, “PAMTA is a good first step, but as it’s currently written, I think it’s only a beginning in reducing the threat of antibiotic resistance in animal agriculture.” The proposed legislation could even be less effective if industry lobbyists are successful in redefining what the proposed law should consider therapeutic uses of antibiotics. Martin warns that the industry is trying to argue that producers no longer use antibiotics as growth promoters; rather they’re primarily using the drugs to keep the animals from getting sick. Martin quipped, “it’s the crowded, unhealthy, putrid conditions these animals are forced to live in that’s making them sick, and that is not a reasonable excuse to threaten the effectiveness of antibiotics in human medicine.”