Leadership at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made it abundantly clear last week that the low-dose usage of antibiotics in food animals, simply to promote growth or improve feed efficiency, needlessly contributes to the emergence of antibiotic resistant bacteria and poses a serious threat to public health. Despite the fact that the FDA [...]

U.S. industrial animal agriculture routinely incorporates low-dose concentrations of antimicrobials into the feed or water of healthy production animals for the purposes of growth promotion and feed efficiency, an application approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This practice selects for resistance among bacteria exposed to antimicrobials, and there has been concern that [...]

The American Veterinary Medical Association’s recent “response” to the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production’s final report on the state of industrial animal agriculture is disconcerting. It appears that leadership of the veterinary professional organization is attempting to misuse science to obfuscate and delay critically needed changes in the food animal production system rather [...]