July 1, 2013

US launches law to safeguard use of antibiotics in agriculture

US Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) has introduced a law to fight antibiotic resistant superbugs that develop when antibiotics are misused in animal agriculture.

The Preventing Antibiotic Resistance Act of 2013 directs the Food and Drug Administration to prohibit the use of human antibiotics in the feed and water of healthy farm animals if they jeopardise human health.

The bill requires drug companies and agriculture producers to demonstrate that antibiotics are used to treat clinically diagnosable diseases - not just to fatten livestock. The over-use of these antibiotics contributes to the development of so-called 'superbugs,' or infections that cannot be treated with existing medicines.

"Antibiotics are the closest thing to a 'silver bullet' in human medicine given their ability to wipe out a wide variety of bacterial infections, but we are in danger of losing this weapon in the fight against infectious diseases," said Senator Feinstein.

"When antibiotics are fed in low doses to animals, only the strongest, most resistant bacteria are left behind to reproduce. By the time these resistant pathogens make their way from the animals into our communities, the infections can be costly to treat or untreatable all together."

A recent study published in the medical journal, Clinical Infectious Diseases, found that nearly 50% of grocery store meat was contaminated with antibiotic resistant pathogens, according to the Senator. Approximately 25% of this meat was contaminated with pathogens that were resistant to three or more type of antibiotics.

"The irresponsible use of antibiotics is dangerous, and tens of thousands of people in the US die each year from antibiotic resistant infections," Senator Feinstein added. "We must preserve the efficacy of these life-saving drugs by carefully restricting their overuse in our agriculture products."