Monday, July 02 2012 - 09:02 PM
Fourth of July Message From NRDC
From the Natural Resources Defense Council:

July 2, 2012

Getting ready for the 4th of July? Before you head to the grocery store to shop for the big barbeque, there’s something you should know: 51.8% of tested chicken breasts at grocery stores are contaminated with antibiotic-resistant E.coli.

This dangerous superbug has no place in our food supply but our nation’s livestock industry is breeding E.coli and other dangerous drug-resistant bacteria by needlessly dosing healthy animals with antibiotics.

The Food and Drug Administration has the authority to stop this reckless practice and it’s accepting comments from the public right now.

People need antibiotics when they get sick, but right now 80 percent of all antibiotics sold in the United States are fed to livestock, and the vast majority are used on animals that do not need the drugs. These animals are dosed anyway to promote faster weight gain and to compensate for crowded and unsanitary conditions. It’s like taking antibiotics to avoid getting sick, instead of just washing your hands.

Superbugs can easily make their way out of the farm and spread to humans through infected food and water. Just one kind of superbug is estimated to kill more Americans each year than HIV/AIDS.

And so far, the FDA has done little to protect our health beyond releasing voluntary guidelines, mere suggestions that the food and pharmaceutical industries can choose to follow or ignore entirely.

We need to send a clear message to the agency charged with protecting human health: this empty gesture is not enough. Will you help pressure the FDA to finally end the dangerous misuse of antibiotics on livestock by sending a letter by July 10th? FDA decision makers are shutting down public comments in just over a week, so we have to act quickly to send as many letters as possible.

NRDC Activist Alert <earthaction@nrdcaction.org>

Message sent to:
Dr. William T. Flynn, Deputy Director for Science Policy, Food and Drug Administration

Subject:
FDA-2011-D-0889

SAMPLE TEXT

Dear Dr. Flynn,

The FDA’s Guidance 209 and proposed Guidance 213 are not sufficient to protect public health.

The practice of routinely administering low doses of antibiotics to entire herds and flocks is a critical driver in the rising problem of antibiotic resistance, which compromises the effectiveness of these essential medicines, and could once again make common illnesses debilitating or fatal. The health risks posed by the widespread use of these medicines in animal agriculture are recognized by the nation’s leading scientists, health organizations and the FDA itself.

The FDA’s preferred approach of voluntary measures, which allows industry to choose whether to act, has serious flaws, including that it does not require drug manufacturers or livestock producers to change practices; it allows many of the same dangerous low-dose uses of antibiotics at a herd-wide or flock-wide level to continue under a different name (i.e. “disease prevention” instead of “growth promotion”); and it lacks any provisions to monitor antibiotic use and resistance patterns to ensure that its plan will actually lead to a meaningful decrease in the use of these drugs in animal agriculture.

Instead of relying on a voluntary approach, the FDA should:

1) Comply with recent court orders directing the agency to move forward with the process for binding regulations to stop the use in animal agriculture of all antibiotics important for human medicine, unless those uses can be proven safe.

2) If it chooses to continue in parallel with its voluntary approach, revise its guidance to eliminate loopholes that would allow livestock operators to continue the practice of administering herd-wide or flock-wide doses of antibiotics to animals that are not sick, even if operators call this practice “disease prevention.”

3) Establish a monitoring program to collect the information from industry needed to evaluate antibiotic use trends, prevalence of high risk practices and incidence of drug resistance.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment.

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