WASHINGTON -- In a dramatic shift in policy, the Food and Drug Administration of the Obama administration supports the phase out of the use of antibiotics for growth promotion and efficient feed use in meat animals and thinks all animal antibiotic use should be under the supervision of a veterinarian, a key FDA official said July 13.
In testimony before an unusual House Rules hearing on a bill introduced by Rules Chairwoman Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., to limit the nontherapeutic use of pharmaceuticals in livestock, FDA Principal Deputy Commissioner Joshua Sharfstein said he and FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg agree with the scientific findings that the large-scale use of antibiotics in meat animals is one of the causes of increased resistance to the effect of the drugs in humans and therefore think the use should be reduced.
After the hearing, Scharfstein said the Obama administration is not endorsing Slaughter's bill, but that he was stating the administration's principles on the issue. He also acknowledged that this was the first time the FDA has taken this position. The Bush administration had resisted efforts to reduce the use of the nontherapeutic use of drugs in animals.
Nontherapeutic
vs. disease control
ADVERTISEMENT
Slaughter said she wants to end the meat industry's nontherapeutic use of seven classes of antibiotics that are used for both humans and animals. The antibiotics are given to animals when they live in confined animal feeding operations where diseases could spread easily because the animals live so close together.
Slaughter said, as a microbiologist, "I cannot stress enough the importance that our current stock of antibiotics does not become obsolete."
Slaughter said that "approximately 70 percent of antibiotics produced in the United States are given to cattle, pigs and chicken to promote growth and to compensate for crowded, unsanitary conditions."
Both Slaughter and Sharfstein emphasized that they support the use of antibiotics to treat animal diseases. Sharfstein said that the antibiotics also could be used for prevention in the case of a disease outbreak.
Slaughter said she would consider adding her bill to the food safety bill now moving through the House. The House and Energy Committee, which approved the food safety bill, resisted efforts to include it in its version, but with her power as Rules chairwoman, it seems likely that Slaughter could make sure it will be offered as an amendment on the House floor.
Representatives of the Union of Concerned Scientists as well as the Pew Charitable Trusts, which sponsored a commission on industrial farm animal production last year, testified in favor of the bill. In addition to supporting the view that residues of the drug are leading to resistance of the drugs in humans, they testified that the continued use endangers the U.S. meat industry because other countries that are banning the nontherapeutic use may ban U.S. meat. Representatives of Chipotle Mexican Grill, which sells pork from Niman Ranch, a network of 50 family-owned farms that do not use confined feeding operations, and Bon Appetit, a restaurant company, testified in favor of Slaughter's bill. Chipotle CEO Steve Ellis testified that the "crowding and contamination" in confined animal feeding operations "fosters disease, especially respiratory illnesses so the pigs are fed some 10 million pounds of antibiotics."
Industry opposition
The conventional meat industry is dramatically opposed to Slaughter's bill. Rep. Leonard Boswell, D-Iowa, testified and defended the use of antibiotics, saying that their use makes the U.S. meat supply safe.
ADVERTISEMENT
But no representatives of the industry testified. The National Pork Producers Council issued a news release that the witness list was one sided and unfair. A Slaughter spokesman said that Slaughter expected House Rules ranking member David Dreier to provide pro-industry witnesses but Dreier and other Republicans had declined to participate in the hearing. A House Rules GOP spokesman said that Dreier did not want to spend his time on a hearing on which Rules did not have substantive jurisdiction and that he was devoting efforts to convincing Democrats to allow open rules on appropriations bills.
