Antibiotics for Animals: FDA gives in to Big Food

Environmental and consumer groups have condemned the US Food and Drug Administration's move to renege on its long-held policy to regulate the use of human antibiotics in animal feed. Last week, the agency quietly announced it was withdrawing its plan to limit the use of antibiotics fed to healthy livestock intended for human consumption. Critics say the U-turn, which comes amid the FDA's own stated concerns over food safety, is at odds with its obligations to protect the public. The groups also criticised the timing of the announcement, which was made during the holiday season and disclosed only in the federal register.

The use of low doses of antibiotics in agricultural animal feed contributes to drug-resistant superbugs, according to food and health experts. The EU has already banned them. The FDA first acknowledged in 1977 that the overuse of antibiotics in healthy livestock for growth promotion and disease prevention was unsafe and could promote antibiotic resistant bacteria that could infect people. An advisory committee at the time recommended that the FDA immediately withdraw approval for two drugs, penicillin and tetracycline, for subtherapeutic uses of the drugs in livestock.

Last week, in a statement in the Federal Register, the FDA says it plans instead to allow the industry to self-regulate and "focus its efforts for now on the potential for voluntary reform and the promotion of the judicious use of antimicrobials in the interest of public health".

Livestock consume about 80% of the antibiotics sold in the US. Obviously, Big Pharma stood to lose a lot of money, which in our opinion, probably sealed the fate of reform.