U.S. FDA to phase out some antibiotic use in animal production

U.S. FDA to phase out some antibiotic use in animal production(reuters.com)

195 points by brianmartinek 12 years ago | 64 comments

The use of antibiotics in food stock should be banned completely. Saving a few cents per pound on meat isn't worth the damage to our antibiotic stock. Wanna give antibiotics to an animal, fine, but now it can't be used for food.

virmundi 12 years ago | |

It is oddly cruel to see that logic applied in organic meats. An animal might become infected. It might die a very painful and slow death. But to keep organic certification, not antibiotic maybe used on the farm.

Even for animal that will become food, I would think that kindness should be applied. If it is sick/infected, but still useful for meat, cure it and eat it. If not, just kill it. Don't let it suffer.

awjr 12 years ago | | |

Organic farmers have approved antibiotics they can use (as well as natural remedies). If a dairy cow is treated with antibiotics the holding time before she is allowed back into the milking process is usually double or triple the normal holding time for a non-organic cow (10-15 days vs 5 days). Sh is still milked but the milk is poured away.

digikata 12 years ago | | |

I think that banning of antibiotic use in livestock generally focuses on the preemptive addition of antibiotics in feed. Antibiotic additives are associated with increased weight gain for the animals, as well as letting feed lots put more animals in denser quarters while keeping disease rates down. These direct economic drivers are why industry has fought the regulations for so long - despite the long-term detrimental societal health costs. It's pretty much a classic case of an economic externality needing regulation.

Edit: here's a reference link http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food-...

mratzloff 12 years ago | | |

They use antibiotics in part because they keep animals in such close proximity. Disease spreads quickly in those conditions. In other words, they're creating the conditions that you would say justify the use of antibiotics.

You can't leave a loophole, or else companies will simply take advantage of it, even if it's to the detriment of society as a whole.

nate_meurer 12 years ago | | |

I wholeheartedly agree :) However in the American meat industry, terminally ill animals are universally culled in short order.

elisha 12 years ago | | |

Another excellent reason to not eat meat.

6d0debc071 12 years ago | | |

It's dead in the end either way. If you assume we're going to eat it.

Is it worth an extra animal's worth of meat for an extra animal's worth of anti-bacterial resistance, that's the core question here. If we're not using these antibiotics so widely to prevent the infection in the first place how does that scale?

It may be better, in the long run, just to say 'no antibiotics in animals' and kill those that become ill out of hand. Otherwise I can see this becoming an easy out for farmers - they could still keep the animals in atrocious conditions, knowing that they can use AB to cure them after they become ill - and if a large number of them become ill then we'll be in exactly the same pickle we are now.

anigbrowl 12 years ago | | |

I'm not against antibiotics being used to treat individual sick animals. That's a whole different proposition from employing them as a food supplement and just dosing the entire herd as a prophylactic.

awjr 12 years ago | |

Think you're on the right track here. Antibiotics are used as a way of enabling livestock (hoof, beak or gill) to be bread in closer confines with high energy rich feed that, naturally, the livestock could not cope with.

Expect massive push back from the various farming industries affected by this. Money uber alles.

venomsnake 12 years ago | |

No they should be used. Just shouldn't be the way they are used now. Animal is sick - treat him, but first you must take every possible way to prevent disease in the first place. Like giving the animals space/grass and better fecal matter removal. Space the herd and you reduce drastically the chances of outbreak.

mscarborough 12 years ago | | |

You're right, if we could do it properly.

The sad thing is that we're not starting from a first principle that animal welfare is even something to care about. Ignoring the fact that they're all slaughtered, these animals live a really bleak existence.

You make a good point, but despite all the farming subsidies, the economics of raising animals to eat them are still pretty bad. Fecal management, spacing herds, different feed...none of those things are viable at any scale approaching what is expected to meet the demand. Small farmers aren't paid enough and the larger places are just factories.

ParkerK 12 years ago | |

>worth the damage to our antibiotic stock It isn't worth damaging our future by needlessly speeding up drug resistance either

tokenadult 12 years ago |

"'Because antimicrobial drug use in both humans and animals can contribute to the development of antimicrobial resistance, it is important to use these drugs only when medically necessary,' the FDA said in a release." This is long overdue. The FDA action is consistent with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations in the United States and with agricultural regulations in the European Union. We have discussed the science behind this no-brainer recommendation several times here on Hacker News.[1]

Yes, veterinarians may need to treat animal diseases with antibiotics. Antibiotics are in several cases "natural" substances that evolved through natural selection, mycotoxins emitted by fungi, or bacterial toxins emitted by one clade of bacteria, with the effect of killing bacteria in a world full of bacteria. The bacteria susceptible to antibiotics, in turn, have long been under selection pressure to evolve resistance to antiobiotics, as some strains of bacteria did long ago in the wild. The use of antibiotics in human medicine has revolutionized several forms of medical treatment and added millions of years of healthy life to humankind's prospects, but use of antibiotics must go hand-in-hand with other forms of infection control to minimize selective sweeps of antibiotic resistance as a trait among most harmful strains of bacteria. It's a bad trade-off to use antibiotics without veterinary indications in general animal husbandry, so this regulatory step is a step in the right direction.

Meanwhile, the already established multiple-drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis are very worrisome,[2] and will have to be a focus of much research and urgent public-health campaigns.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6599040

[2] http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230344420...

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-06-23/news...

http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2012/Facing-the-Reality-of-Drug-R...

http://www.tbcindia.nic.in/pdfs/RNTCP%20Response%20DR%20TB%2...

marze 12 years ago | |

Yeah. Not really worth it to make meat 0.6 cents a pound cheaper.

chaostheory 12 years ago |

This guidelines are just voluntary? What's the point?

"'Our fear ... is that there will be no reduction in antibiotic use as companies will either ignore the plan altogether or simply switch from using antibiotics for routine growth promotion to using the same antibiotics for routine disease prevention,' said Steven Roach, senior analyst with advocacy group Keep Antibiotics Working."

anigbrowl 12 years ago | |

One good aspect of this is that producers will able able to advertise their food as being raised without unecessary antibiotics. Many milk producers prefer not to use the growth hormone rBST, but because the FDA has no found any difference in the quality of milk between cows that are administered rBST and those that are not, producers who prefer not to use it have to put a disclaimer on their on their milk stating this FDA finding to prevent legal action from producers who do use that additive. With an FDA guideline saying 'better not to use antibiotics as a food additive' producers can draw consumers' attention to that fact without having to use defensive legal language that undercuts their message.

mronge 12 years ago | |

My understanding with FDA guidelines is they are always "voluntary" only in name. Companies effectively have to comply or the FDA will crack down very hard on the company.

chaostheory 12 years ago | | |

I really doubt it. The FDA is heavily influenced by whatever administration is in power and administrations are heavily influenced by lobbyists.

This is why it's a voluntary guideline.

krstck 12 years ago | | |

Food companies are usually following a more-strict standard set by their customers.

krstck 12 years ago | |

Many food industry quality control practices are effectively determined by consumer demand rather than the FDA/USDA. It's often that, as a manufacturer, your customer audit will be more intensive than the government one. The feds just don't have enough auditors to really keep a close look on anything but the most "at risk" plants, so the food industry is basically watching itself in a circular manner. Retail food establishments are auditing their suppliers, who are auditing their suppliers, and so on.

arbitrage 12 years ago |

I hear that the FDA will also be releasing a recommendation to close the barn door after the cows get out.

You just can't be too careful, you know.

giarc 12 years ago | |

You're right, this is long overdue, however hind sight is 20/20 and late is better than never.

redblacktree 12 years ago | | |

The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago; the second-best time is now.

mhurron 12 years ago | |

Bad things were done before, so clearly they should never be remedied.

pessimizer 12 years ago | | |

You can't unkill the dead, even if you have an honest change of heart. Long-term antibiotic effectiveness may be a dead thing.

josefresco 12 years ago | |

Joking aside, if there was monetary gain to be had from leaving the barn door open, you bet business would take full advantage of it.

krstck 12 years ago |

Consumer demand is actually a pretty effective way to enact change in the food industry. If you punish the grocery stores and restaurants, the pain will be felt all the way up the supply chain. Walmart et al. pay very close attention to consumer demand and they can, and will, strong-arm their suppliers into complying.

(Edit: This is not to say that there shouldn't also be strict government regulations as well.)

lifeisstillgood 12 years ago |

For me the big issue is the phrase "animal production".

Not farming, rearing, husbandry, but straight to the point factory industrial production.

ck2 12 years ago |

How about phasing it out immediately for vegetables and fruits?

Because learning about that has freaked me out for weeks now.

jeffheard 12 years ago |

I think this is when my granddad would say, "A day late and a dollar short."