Much of the beef, pork or chicken we eat contains small amounts of antibiotics. The drugs are fed to animals so they can thrive in the crowded, often-fetid factory farms that dominate U.S. meat and poultry production.
But giving animals a steady diet of these medicines has contributed to the increase of antibiotic-resistant bugs that can pose grave risks to humans.
This isn’t news to the Food and Drug Administration, which has known since the early 1970s about the misuse of antibiotics in agriculture and done little about it. The agency seemed to be headed in the right direction in 1977, when it proposed a ban on using penicillin and two forms of tetracycline for animal weight gain after finding that the drugs “had not been proven to be safe.” Under pressure from Congress and drugmakers, the agency was ordered to hold hearings. It never did.
This month the FDA finally said it would issue rules for drugmakers and farmers to voluntarily stop putting antibiotics in animal feed and water to help them grow.
The guidelines will ask farmers to phase out the practice over the next three years. Pharmaceutical makers are to change the labels on their products, listing the approved uses.
Unfortunately, the loopholes are gaping. Even if farmers comply, they can still feed animals antibiotics for disease prevention, provided they get a veterinarian’s approval.
Nor is there much in the way of enforcement envisioned to discourage farmers or vets from engaging in off-label usage — giving antibiotics to animals to aid growth. (Animals that are free of disease tend to grow faster, the argument goes.)
Pigs are given antibiotics only when they are sick. Chickens are never given antibiotics. Giving antibiotics to sick animals is not a loophole, and refusing treatment for sick animals is animal abuse.
I and my family eat meat pork and chicken but more importantly we do not abuse our antibiotic regimen, nor do we ask for antibiotics just because we have the sniffles, a bit of a cold or the ‘flu.
I understand that it is necessary to have guidelines in farming practises but surely the greatest danger has been the need to influence people that every time you are sick you must take a medication and ‘soldier on’..
Far simpler to take a couple of days off work, sleep, rest, eat in moderation and allow the body’s natural immune system do what it has done for thousands of years….heal itself.
Perhaps the myth of animals being force-fed antibiotics, just because the farmers want to, needs to be debunked and work places need to be educated about the cycles of common, everyday illnesses and change their culture.