Groups Flock To Bill That Could Alter Antibiotic Use On Livestock

Elizabeth Bailey

This spring, the United States House of Representatives introduced the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (PAMTA) (H.R. 1549) with an echoing bill (S. 619) in the Senate.

For the Pew Charitable Trusts, the legislation is a victory. For the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) it poses the risk of jeopardizing animal health.

The proposed bills would withdraw the use of seven classes of antibiotics needed in human health care that are also used on factory farms. The change would enable farmers to continue using the drugs for animals or herds that are sick, but would remove their use in bolstering weight gain or compensating for overcrowded conditions.

According to the Pew Foundation, 70 percent of U.S. antibiotics are used in animals raised on industrial farms. This, the foundation believes, has the potential to lead to deadly strains of antibiotic-resistant illnesses.

“Medical experts agree that this practice directly contributes to a dramatic rise in antibiotic-resistant infections in people,” Robert Martin, senior officer with the Pew Environment Group, said in a press release. “We must reduce the use of antibiotics today to help preserve their effectiveness tomorrow.”

It is difficult to know the exact levels of antibiotics used on various farms because there are few regulations and little oversight of its use on industrial farms.

“Consumers in the U.S. do not know what their food is treated with, or how often,” a Pew press release notes. “Nor is there a system in place to test meat for dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria.”

This is the crux of the case for PAMTA.

Farm Bureau holds a very different view.

“Farmers and ranchers and the veterinarians they work with use antibiotics carefully, judiciously and according to label instructions, primarily to treat, prevent and control disease in our flocks and herds,” AFBF president Bob Stallman said in a press release. “Antibiotics are critically important to the health and welfare of the animals and the safety of the food produced.”

For AFBF, it’s a matter of protecting the professional judgment of veterinarians and livestock producers in producing healthy products. The federation notes that bacteria are surviving less and less through food processing and handling, food-borne illness is down, development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in animals is stable and resistant food-borne bacteria in humans is on the decline. According to AFBF, the past 40 years of antibiotic use in farm animals has been an important factor in protecting public health through food safety.

“Evaluating product safety is reasonable,” Mike Apley, DVM, Ph.D., noted in an article in Beef Magazine, “but the goal of these bills is to stack the deck so these products won’t get a fair assessment.”

For Apley, the benefits of antibiotic use in livestock have been ignored in the risk assessments done on the topic. While resistance may be passed through to consumers, he notes that the benefit of healthy animals at the time of slaughter has not been properly examined.

“I’m not a big supporter of using antimicrobials used for treating other diseases as growth promoters,” he said. “However, when we cross the line to disease prevention, we’re talking about impeding our ability to protect animal welfare and conserve livestock resources.”

To learn more about the Pew Foundation’s work on this topic, visit www.saveantibiotics.org.

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