The FDA program to phase out use of antibiotics as a growth promotant in food animals “may allow some injudicious uses to persist,” says the Pew Trusts’ Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming. Under the voluntary program announced a year ago, antibiotics would be reserved for disease prevention and treatment and can be used only under the direction of a veterinarian. Pew says one-fourth of the 287 antibiotics covered by FDA Guidance 213 “can be used in at least one species of livestock (chickens, turkeys, pigs, or cattle) for disease prevention at levels that are fully within the range of growth promotion dosages and with no limit on the duration of treatment.” For 26 drugs, the approved use for disease prevention includes maintenance of weight gain, says Pew, which suggests stronger FDA guidelines and “a clear target for reduction of total antibiotic use in food animals.”
“There is no loophole,” responded Animal Health Institute, a trade group for makers of animal medicines. “There are 82 growth promotion claims that will be removed from the labels of medically important antibiotics. Of those approved applications with growth promotion claims, only 17 also have prevention claims on their product labels, and in none of those 17 instances are the dose and duration of use the same for the growth claim and prevention claim. In short, growth promotion uses of medically important antibiotics are being eliminated under the FDA policy.”
In India, thousands of newborn children have died from “bacterial infections that are resistant to most known antibiotics,” says the New York Times, due to poor hygiene and sanitation and over-use of antibiotics. “While far from alone in creating antibiotic resistance, India’s resistant infections have already begun to migrate elsewhere…Indeed, researchers have already found “superbugs” carrying a genetic code first identified in India — NDM1 (or New Delhi metallo-beta lactamase 1) — around the world, including in France, Japan, Oman and the United States,” says the Times.