Dive Brief:
- The Food and Drug Administration is hoping to reduce the use of antibiotics in animals used for meat production. Scientists believe the use of antibiotics in animals leads to increased resistance to the drugs in humans — thus turning treatable infections into deadly diseases.
- Regulators are asking pharmaceutical companies to voluntarily change labeling on some drugs so as not to suggest they are appropriate for use in animals.
- Antibiotic resistance leads to the death of roughly 23,000 people a year who cannot be treated successfully for infection, according to the Centers for Disease Control
Dive Insight:
It's about time. There are few things in the food chain that are as disturbing as the use of antibiotics in animal feed. The use of the drugs have long infuriated public-health officials. Antibiotics — perhaps the greatest medical achievement of mankind's history — are now given three times as often to animals as they are to humans. That would be fine, we suppose, if the animals were sick. But antibiotics are given to livestock because a) the drugs promote increased growth with less food, and b) the animals often live in crowded conditions where disease spreads.
In other words, the use of antibiotics in animal feed is a business decision that takes the lives of humans. And that's exactly the sort of thing the FDA is supposed to regulate.