Bill Seeks (Again) To End Over-Use Of Antibiotics In Farm Animals
Antibiotic resistance is a big problem. Farmers know it. Consumer advocates know it. Doctors, the CDC, and the FDA all know it. You know it. And the largest contributor by far to the crisis is the 80% of antibiotics that are used in industrial farming. And Congress is, once again, taking a stab at making agricultural antibiotic abuse against the law before it’s too late.
Rep. Louise Slaughter of New York today introduced a bill — PAMTA, the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act — intended to stem the tide of antibiotic-resistant superbugs.
The bill would amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to severely limit the non-theraputic use of any medically important human antibiotic drugs in agriculture. Specifically, it would mean you can only use antibiotics to treat animals who are actually sick with bacterial infections. Currently, antibiotics are widely used in industrially-farmed animals’ food and water to promote animal growth and as preventative measures against disease outbreak from unsanitary conditions.
Antibiotic resistance is a critical problem in modern medicine, as more people every year suffer from infections that are now difficult or impossible to treat. In a press statement, Slaughter’s office specified that over two million Americans acquire antibiotic-resistant infections each year — and over 23,000 of those prove fatal. Globally, that figure is approximately 700,000 fatalities due to antibiotic-resistant infections each year.
http://consumerist.com/2015/03/24/bill-seeks-again-to-end-over-use-of-antibiotics-in-farm-animals/
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