It’s about time the FDA did something about this (though I’m not holding my breath). In the meantime I will continue to eat organic chicken raised on free range farms – free of antibiotics and growth hormones, lots of fresh salmon and beef very sparingly if at all.
June 28, 2010 –Giving animals antibiotics in order to increase food production is a threat to public health and should be stopped, the FDA said today.
The federal agency says it has the power to ban the practice, but it’s starting by issuing "draft guidance" in hopes the food industry will make voluntary changes. After a 60-day public comment period, the guidance will become FDA policy.
The guidance is based on two principles:
- Antibiotics should be given to food animals only to protect their health.
- All animal use of antibiotics should be overseen by veterinarians.
"We are seeing the emergence of multidrug-resistant pathogens," FDA Deputy Commissioner Joshua Sharfstein, MD, said at a news conference. "FDA believes overall weight of evidence supports the conclusion that using medically important antimicrobial drugs for production purposes is not appropriate."
Sharfstein said it’s a public health issue when antibiotics important for human health are given to animals on a massive scale. Such use encourages the growth of drug-resistant bacteria that can cause hard-to-treat human disease.
Like humans, animals sometimes need antibiotics to fight or prevent specific infections. The FDA says it has no problem with this.
But producers regularly give antibiotics to food animals because it makes them gain weight faster or makes them gain more weight from the food they eat. This is the practice the FDA wants to end.
Sharfstein hopes that by offering the carrot of voluntary guidelines, industry will avoid the stick of new regulations.
"We are not expecting people to change tomorrow. This is the first step in FDA establishing principles from which we could move to other steps, such as oversight," Sharfstein said. "This does not tell people what to do, it establishes principles and tells people how to achieve those principles."
Finally! Some one has taken notice that animals do not need to be fed antibiotics regularly and that such antibiotics can be harmful to humans. Here’s to hormone and antibiotic free meat and chicken!
It’s easy for me to find hormone free chicken but not beef which is why I don’t eat beef very often. I did find a Farmer several hours away raising Piedmontese beef but only sells it by the half or quarter which is way too much for just the 2 of us. Are you able to buy free range beef where you live?
Elaine the MOVIE FOOD INC. should be seen by all Americans to start with…….We here in Canada are under much stickter rules for our farmers, here if a cow is on antibiotics it must be kept seperated from the other cows until the vet has checked them out and made sure they are ok again, and if you have chickens even for your own use they have to be kept in a special area just for them away from the healthy cows, we also have quota systems here for how much milk etc. you are allowed to have your cows produce this I know for sure as my daughter has been married to a dairy farmer for 27yrs now.
Mary Anne I will see if I can find the movie, sounds like it’s one I would like to see. I did know that Canada has much stricter food guidelines than the US. Once again we could take some lessons from our northern neighbor! Thank you for telling us about your son-in-law dairy farmer, very interesting!
Industrial agriculture has gone way too far.
I could live without beef at all, but the spouse can’t/won’t.
We can get organic locally grown beef and pork here, and I try to support those people (especially having seen the deplorable conditions of North Carolina hog farms.)
Thanks, Elaine. This is an issue I haven’t paid enough attention to. I think I don’t do enough to avoid these dangers. And I also think these new guidelines will not be enough to change the behavior of the food producers.
@Cilicious – I like beef occasionally but not a staple of my diet. It’s nice you can get organic beef where you live. I’ve seen the videos of the hog and poultry farms, it’s disgusting, I had to quit watching.
@Ferd – but we have to start somewhere, maybe eventually our food supply will be as safe as Canada’s, free of antibiotics and human growth hormone.