70% of All Antibiotics Given to Healthy Livestock

[Guest guest]

Union of Concerned Scientists

http://www.mindfully.org/Health/Antibiotics-Healthy-Livestock-UCS.htm

Excessive use of antibiotics by meat producers, 8 times more than in human

medicine, contributes to alarming increase in antibiotic

resistance

WASHINGTON - Every year in the United States 25 million pounds of

valuable antibiotics -- roughly 70 percent of total US antibiotic

production -- are fed to chickens, pigs, and cows for nontherapeutic

purposes like growth promotion, according to a new report from the

Union of Concerned Scientists. This finding -- 40 percent greater than the

estimate of the livestock industry for all animal uses -- is the first

transparent estimate of the quantities of antibiotics used in meat production.

 

The report is also the first to show that the quantities of antibiotics used

in animal agriculture dwarf those used in human medicine. Nontherapeutic

livestock use in chickens, pigs, and cows accounts for 8 times more antibiotics

than human medicine, which is using only 3 million pounds per year.

 

" The meat industry's share of the antibiotic-resistance problem has been

ignored for too long, " said Dr. Margaret Mellon, Director of the Food and

Environment Program at UCS and co-author of the new report.

 

" Antibiotics are a precious resource and should be used in animals only when

necessary. "

 

Until now, health officials and citizens had to rely on incomplete

industry estimates to design effective responses to the

antibiotic-resistance problem. According to the new UCS report,

" Hogging It: Estimates of Antimicrobial Abuse in Livestock, " the total use of

antibiotics in healthy livestock has climbed from 16 million pounds in the

mid-1980s to 25 million pounds today. Of that, approximately 10 million pounds

are used in hogs, 11 million pounds in poultry, and 4 million pounds in cattle.

 

" The excessive use of antibiotics by the livestock industry is

sobering, " said Dr. Charles Benbrook, an independent economist and

co-author of the report. " Feeding antibiotics to animals from birth to slaughter

may modestly improve meat industry profits, but it puts

everyone's health at risk. It is time to rethink how pigs, cattle and poultry

are raised in the United States. "

 

Available industry data appear to underestimate the usage of

antibiotics and are far too general to help scientists explore the linkages

between drug use in livestock and the spread of resistance.

 

With no government-backed data available, the authors of the report devised a

methodology for calculating antibiotic use in livestock operations from publicly

available information, including herd size, approved drug lists, and dosages.

 

The researchers acknowledge the need for more complete, up-to-date data on

livestock antibiotic use. They invite the

pharmaceutical industry, which holds the production data, and the

animal livestock industry, which could compile usage information, to bring

better data to the public arena. But new data must be transparent and

verifiable.

 

" The public has been flying blind, " said Mellon. " The government should act

now to collect the needed data. The price of complacency could set us back to an

era where untreatable infectious diseases are regrettably commonplace. "

 

UCS recommends that the Food and Drug Administration establish a system to

compel companies that sell antibiotics for livestock use to provide annual

reports on the quantity of these drugs sold. The US Department of Agriculture

should improve the completeness and accuracy of its periodic surveys of

antibiotic use in livestock. The FDA, USDA, and Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention should speed up implementation of its

government-wide action plan, which calls for the establishment of

monitoring systems and the assessment of ways to collect and protect

the

confidentiality of usage data.

The FDA, which oversees the approval and cancellation of veterinary

drugs, will discuss the use of antimicrobial drugs in food animals at a

public meeting, January 22-24.

A full copy of the new report can be found on the web at www.ucsusa.org

. The Union of Concerned Scientists is a nonprofit alliance of

thousands

of committed citizens and leading scientists working to preserve our

health, protect our safety and enhance our quality of life. UCS has

used

rigorous scientific analysis, innovative policy development, and

effective citizen advocacy to achieve practical environmental

solutions.

* PLEASE NOTE: In this press release we use the terms antibiotic and

antimicrobial interchangeably. The term antimicrobial encompasses

substances, whether naturally occurring or synthetically produced,

directed against all microorganisms. Antibiotic is a narrower term that

some scientists reserve for only naturally occurring substances that

destroy or inhibit the growth of bacteria.

--------------------------------

antibiotic resistance

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are on the rise. Patients once

effectively

treated for pneumonia, tuberculosis, or ear infections may now have to

try three or more antibiotics before they find one that works. And as

more bacterial strains develop resistance, more people will die,

because

effective antibiotics are not identified quickly enough or because the

bacteria causing their disease are resistant to all available

antibiotics.

Why have bacterial strains become resistant? The short answer is

overuse

of antibiotics. Physicians and hospitals have overprescribed the drugs,

and patients have demanded them -- even for illnesses not caused by

bacteria.

Veterinarians, too, overprescribe drugs to treat sick animals, and even

more, livestock producers use massive amounts to promote animal growth

and make their business more efficient and profitable. On top of that,

growers spray antibiotics on crops to control bacteria that damage

vegetables and kill trees.

While medicine must act to slow the emergence of resistant bacteria, it

is equally important to eliminate uses -- primarily agricultural --

whose benefits are economic, not therapeutic. Roughly a third of all

antibiotics produced in the United States -- about 80 percent of the

antibiotics used in agriculture -- are fed to animals to bring them up

to slaughter weight as quickly as possible. Both the Centers for

Disease

Control (CDC) and the World Health Organization have called for an end

to this abuse of antibiotics we depend on in human medicine.

UCS has launched a campaign to urge the Food and Drug Administration to

ban the use of antibiotics for growth promotion. Such a ban would have

the added benefit of pushing livestock management in the direction of

more sustainable practices. By creating conditions that produce

healthier animals, these reforms should also lead to a decrease in

therapeutic uses of antibiotics.

-

Letter to Bayer Corporation from UCS and 9 other organizations

October 31, 2000

Helge H. Wehmeier, President and CEO

The Bayer Corporation

100 Bayer Road

Pittsburgh, PA 15205-9741

Via fax -- 412-778-4431

 

Dear Mr. Wehmeier:

The undersigned health, consumer, and other public-interest groups urge

you to voluntarily withdraw Baytril ®, a fluoroquinolone antibiotic

for

use in poultry, from the market. As you know, on October 31, 2000, the

FDA took the first step in banning fluoroquinolones for use in poultry

by publishing a Notice of Opportunity for Hearing. Bayer has 30 days to

determine whether to request a hearing; if Bayer does not, the

withdrawal automatically takes effect.

FDA's Notice sets forth detailed reasons for concern about continued

use

of fluoroquinolones in poultry, including the recent dramatic rise in

fluoroquinolone resistance among humans. Although fluoroquinolones were

approved for human use in 1986, resistance in foodborne bacteria such

as

Campylobacter and Salmonella remained extremely low until shortly after

their use in poultry began in late 1995. As of 1998, human resistance

levels were at 13.6%; as of 1999, at 17.6%. The trend is both

unmistakable and unacceptable.

These trends are particularly troubling given the importance of

fluoroquinolones in human medicine. Fluoroquinolones are the treatment

of choice for some human intestinal illnesses, most particularly food

poisoning caused by Campylobacter bacteria. Campylobacter is the most

common cause of foodborne illness in the U.S. and can be

life-threatening for persons with weakened immune systems such as the

elderly, chemotherapy patients, and transplant patients.

Fluoroquinolones are also important in treating other illnesses,

including urinary tract infections, bone and joint infections, and some types of

pneumonia.

 

The only other manufacturer of fluoroquinolones for poultry, Abbott

Laboratories, has already requested withdrawal of approval for its product. We

urge Bayer to do likewise without delay.

 

Very truly yours,

Mohammad N. Akhter, MD, MPH

Executive Director, American Public Health Association

Michael F. Jacobson, Ph.D.

Executive Director, Center for Science in the Public Interest

The Rev. Jim Lewis

President, Delmarva Poultry Justice Alliance

Fred Krupp

Executive Director, Environmental Defense

Richard Wood

Executive Director, Food Animal Concerns Trust

Alice Slater

President, Global Resources Action Center for the Environment

Mark Ritchie

Executive Director, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

Brother David Andrews, CSC

Executive Director, The National Catholic Rural Life Conference

Robert K. Musil, Ph.D.

Executive Director, Physicians for Social Responsibility

 

Margaret Mellon, Ph.D., Food and Environment Program Director, Union of

Concerned Scientists

Please direct your response to Karen Florini, Senior Attorney,

Environmental Defense, 1875 Connecticut Ave., NW, Washington, DC,

20009, who will distribute it to other cosigners.