Poultry firms use more antibiotics in feed than thought | Food and Environment Reporting Network

After examining feed tickets for five major poultry companies, Reuters says U.S. poultry producers “are administering antibiotics to their flocks far more pervasively than regulators realize, posing a potential risk to human health.” The FDA launched an initiative last year to end the practice of mixing small amount of antibiotics into livestock rations to encourage food animals to gain weight.

Donald Kennedy, a former FDA commissioner, told Reuters the feed tickets were “astonishing” and added, “This could be an even bigger piece of the anti-biotic resistance problem than I had thought.”

The poultry industry disagrees with some of the concerns about bacteria developing resistance to medically important antibiotics because of exposure to other antibiotics on the farm. The industry says there is little evidence that bacteria that become resistance to antibiotics used on livestock also infect people.