Overuse of antibiotics in livestock is “an urgent public health problem,” Gov Jerry Brown said in signing a law that makes California the first state to regulate antimicrobials administered to food animals. The new law is stricter than FDA’s ongoing phase-out of medically important antibiotics to promote weight gain by cattle, hogs and poultry but won’t come into play as soon. “The science is clear that the overuse of antibiotics in livestock has contributed to the spread of antibiotic resistance and the undermining of decades of life-saving advances in medicine,” Brown said. “SB 27 addresses an urgent public health problem.”
The FDA will bar sub-therapeutic use of medically important antibiotics after December 2016. From that point, the drugs would be limited to treatment and prevention of disease and only under supervision of a veterinarian. Animal agriculture is, by far, the largest user of antibiotics in the nation. The administration is pursuing judicious use of antibiotics in human and animal care as a way to preserve the effectiveness of antibiotics in treating disease in humans.
Like FDA, the new California law prohibits use of medically important antibiotics as a growth promotant; the state ban would take effect Jan 1, 2018, a year later than the FDA ban. In both cases, a prescription would be necessary to obtain the antibiotics in the future.
California would go further than FDA by limiting the everyday use of those drugs for disease prevention and by monitoring sales and use of them, with fines on veterinarians and producers for violations, according to state Sen Jerry Hill, the sponsor of the new law. The state Department of Food and Agriculture and Food will be required to write a list of best management practices and antimicrobial stewardship guidelines.
Brown took an active role in the closing days of the legislative session to toughen the antibiotics bill.
Nonetheless, there are two gray areas that could shorten the reach of the new law, said Consumerist, published by a subsidiary of Consumer Reports. The law bars use of medically important antibiotics in a “regular pattern” for everyday disease prevention without defining what is a regular pattern and it allows low-dosage use of the antibiotics to “address an elevated risk of contraction of a particular disease or infection” without defining what is an elevated risk, said the publication.
“The main point is that SB 27 makes antibiotics abuse a legal matter instead of a purely regulatory affair,” said Consumerist.
Steve Roach of the Keep Antibiotics Working campaign said, “This has been a good year for reducing overuse of antibiotics on farm, starting with the announcements by major chicken producers, fast food chains and grocery chains and now significant action by a state.” Companies such as Foster Farms and Perdue Farms say they will limit medically important antibiotics to treatment of sick poultry.
An environmental group, the Natural Resources Defense Council, applauded the new law. “In particular, banning the regular use of antibiotics and requiring the collection of information on livestock use of antibiotics represent significant steps beyond the flawed and inadequate federal efforts,” said NRDC. “The federal government does not collect information on actual livestock antibiotic use, nor has it put forward any concrete proposals to collect such data.”
In May, FDA proposed a regulation that would require drug makers to provide annual estimates of sales and distribution of antimicrobials for use in cattle, hogs, chickens and turkeys. At present, drug companies provide data on annual sales and distribution for animal use but not by species. FDA, USDA and CDC are considering ways to gather on-the-farm data.