Agricultural Use of Antibiotics Poses Major Public Health Threat

The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) today joined the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the Food Animal Concerns Trust in calling on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to end the use in livestock and poultry feeds of antibiotics that are used in human medicine. The proposed ban would also apply to antibiotics closely related to those used in human medicine.

Close to half the antibiotics now used in the US are used in agriculture, including many antibiotics designed to treat human illness. Use of these medicines can foster antibiotic resistance in bacteria common in animals, such as Salmonella, which cause disease in humans. The resistant bacteria can be passed on to people through the food supply or through direct contact with manure or livestock. Infections with antibiotic resistant bacteria can be extremely difficult for physicians to treat, and can result in long hospital stays or even death.

“Antibiotic resistance is an increasingly grave public health threat,” said Rebecca Goldburg, an EDF senior scientist. “About 80 percent of the antibiotics used in animal agriculture are used not to treat sick animals, but rather to increase animal growth rates and to prevent disease. This indiscriminate and nonessential use of antibiotics dangerously increases the possibility that these and closely related antibiotics will be ineffective when needed to treat people.”

“Our nation’s most at-risk populations, including the very young, the elderly, AIDS patients and people undergoing chemotherapy and transplant procedures, are dependent upon effective antibiotics. The use of important antibiotics including penicillin, erythromycin and tetracyclines in livestock production may imperil basic medical treatment for these vulnerable populations,” said Karen Florini, an EDF senior attorney.

In February, the medical journal The Lancet reported in a research letter that antibiotic resistant bacteria have been found in chicken feed. The discovery is thought to be the first report of such contamination in the United States. The research letter’s authors characterized the finding of such organisms on the threshold of the human food supply as an “ominous sign,” according to The New York Times.

“Few Americans would deliberately choose to jeopardize the health of people for the sake of small economic advantages to the meat industry, yet, current FDA policies do just that. FDA should move quickly and responsibly to end the dangerous practice of allowing antibiotics used in human medicine to be added to animal feeds. America can’t afford to trade long-term public health for the convenience of agribusiness,” said Goldburg.