For the third time in as many years, legislation to ban arsenical drugs from poultry feed has been introduced in Maryland, with House Bill 167 introduced on Tuesday. The ban, if enacted, would help to curb the ongoing problem of arsenical drug use by the poultry industry, and associated public health risks to poultry consumers. For a glimpse of what’s in store for Maryland on this important issue, here’s an update on all things arsenic and the prospects for similar legislation in this upcoming session: Read More >
Last Tuesday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it will ban the “extra-label” use of cephalosporin antibiotics in food animals—that is, veterinarians will not be permitted to use drugs in this class of antibiotics except in ways approved by FDA. (A “drug class” refers to a group of drugs that work in similar ways. Cephalosporins are members of the broad group of beta-lactam antibiotics, which includes penicillin drugs as well. Beta-lactams kill bacteria in similar ways.) FDA’s announcement came almost two weeks after the agency said it would not restrict the use of the other group of beta-lactams, penicillins, as well as tetracyclines, two other drug classes on which it had contemplated taking action. In the span of just two weeks, then, FDA has moved to prevent misuse of one drug while shirking its responsibility for two others. One step forward, two steps back. Read More >
Kremer with piglet (The Missourian)
Drug-resistant infections are nothing to sneeze at. Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization, this year said that “in the absence of urgent corrective and protective actions, the world is heading toward a post-antibiotic era, in which many common infections will no longer have a cure and, once again, kill unabated.” Last year, a New York Times article addressed the increase in drug resistance and how it is outpacing the development of new antibiotics; in the article, Brad Spellberg, a doctor specializing in infectious disease at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, said “For these infections, we’re back to dancing around a bubbling cauldron while rubbing two chicken bones together.”
Last week, I attended a Congressional briefing on the use of antimicrobials in food animal production sponsored by Representative Louise Slaughter (D–NY) and organized by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP). Read More >
How are concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) profiting from Farm Bill subsidy programs targeted at U.S. crop farmers? How are these “hidden subsidies” for industrial farm animal production (IFAP) hurting more sustainable food animal producers? The answers to these questions lie—and are at stake—in the convoluted world of the 2012 Farm Bill legislation.
To say that the Farm Bill is both large and complex is understating the obvious. This legislation impacts every aspect of our food system. One role that the Farm Bill has is to dole out billions to subsidize various producers and industries of the U.S. food economy. A large portion of these programs subsidize crop production. The largest recipients of the most federal dollars through these programs are corn and soybean producers. Read More >
Also contributing to this post is Tyler Smith, Senior Research & Policy Assistant in the Farming for the Future program.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) held a public meeting (video on YouTube) this past Monday at its Rockville campus to discuss reauthorization of the Animal Drug User Fee Act (ADUFA). The current version of ADUFA includes an important provision that requires drug sponsors to report sales of antimicrobial drugs intended for use in food animals to FDA. The agency compiles these sales data and releases a limited summary to the public each year. The 2009 summary report of ADUFA data allowed CLF researchers to calculate the quantity of antimicrobial drugs sold domestically for use in food animals as a percentage of the total quantity of antimicrobial drugs distributed in the U.S. While useful, these public summaries of ADUFA data are very short, comprising just a few pages that provide the quantities of certain antimicrobial drug classes sold in the previous calendar year (see the reports for 2009 and 2010). The summaries do not currently provide many data that non-governmental public health scientists, state and local public health officials, and veterinarians need to better understand patterns in antimicrobial use and resistance. Read More >
This June, South Korea took a giant leap in protecting human health, the environment, and animal welfare—by banning antibiotic use in animal feed. This is big news.
Most importantly, the ban comes at a time when we know with greater and greater certainty that the misuse of antimicrobials in industrial farm animal production (IFAP) is linked to an increase in antibiotic-resistant infections in humans. (A very recent article by Bonnie Marshall and Stuart Levy, published in Clinical Microbiology Reviews, provides one of the most comprehensive summaries of the evidence to date. For more on this read this blogpost by CLF’s Tyler Smith.) Other negative impacts of using antibiotics in animal feed to promote growth and as prophylaxis against the unsanitary conditions of IFAP include allowing to continue practices that degrade the environment, compromise animal welfare, and, too frequently overlooked in discussions about IFAP, harm the mental and physical health of IFAP workers. Read More >
Last Friday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) posted data on antimicrobial drug sales collected under the Animal Drug User Fee Act (ADUFA). ADUFA requires drug companies to report information on sales of antimicrobial drugs intended for use in animals, including food animals. These data provide the most reliable information we have on the use of antimicrobials in animal agriculture. CLF’s Ralph Loglisci and David Love, PhD, used 2009 ADUFA data to calculate the quantity of antimicrobial drugs used in food animal production in that year as a percentage of the total amount of antimicrobial drugs used in the U.S. over the same period—the number, they determined, was almost 80 percent!
The data that FDA posted on its website (October 28) was a PDF that contained sales data for 2010. These data showed a significant increase in antimicrobial drug sales—almost 7 percent. But a funny thing must have happened over the weekend. Read More >
An article just out in Clinical Microbiology Reviews should put to rest the hotly contested debate about antimicrobial misuse in industrial food animal production (IFAP). The review article, “Food Animals and Antimicrobials: Impacts on Human Health,” written by Bonnie Marshall and Stuart Levy of the Tufts University School of Medicine, provides one of the most comprehensive summaries to-date of the evidence linking antimicrobial misuse in IFAP to increased incidence of antimicrobial-resistant infections in humans, and it should silence accusations made by elected officials who contend that there is insufficient evidence to support restrictions on antimicrobial use in agriculture.
These accusations have grown louder in recent months. In June of this year, Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT) attached an amendment to an appropriations bill that would have prohibited the Food and Drug Administration from spending money to restrict the use of antimicrobials in the absence of “hard science.” The “hard science amendment,” poorly written and clumsily introduced, was stripped from the legislation before it passed the House. But the arguments presented by Rehberg and other members nevertheless reveal a strident—and unwarranted—skepticism of existing scientific knowledge about antimicrobial resistance. Read More >
In 2009, China produced 450 million pigs
China has announced that it will join the European Union in banning the use of antimicrobial growth promoters (AGPs) in food animal production, WattAgNet.com reports. When implemented, the ban could affect food animal production throughout the country. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimated Chinese production at more than 4.7 billion chickens, 450 million pigs, and 84 million cattle in 2009, the most recent year for which data are available. This is clearly big news.
The use of AGPs in food animal production has long been a concern in the public health and medical communities. The administration of non-therapeutic doses of antimicrobials to increase animals’ growth rates has been found repeatedly to select for resistant bacteria. The practice could even induce mutations that make bacteria previously susceptible to antibiotics become resistant to them. Read More >
The prospect of a ban on the Maryland poultry industry’s use of arsenic-based drugs has become more complicated with a request by Delegate Maggie McIntosh (D–Maryland House of Delegates, District 43) and Senator Joan Carter Conway (D–Maryland State Senate, District 43) for a review of the scientific literature on the environmental effects of arsenic-based drugs in poultry. As a medical doctor and epidemiologist, I am disappointed that Delegate McIntosh and Senator Conway have not contracted with a research body with the capacity to assess potential human health hazards of Roxarsone and other arsenical drugs used by the Maryland poultry industry.
In their request, McIntosh and Conway have asked the Harry R. Hughes Center for Agro-Ecology to conduct the literature review and submit a report to the Maryland General Assembly (the scope of the study can be found here). As the Hughes Center states in their Scope of Work (read Scope of Work Hughes Center 2011 here),“We are not public health/human health experts and therefore cannot comment on concerns in these areas.” Read More >
