The FDA Has Finally Taken Steps to End Antibiotic Use in Livestock

It’s taken four years, warnings from the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control, and disease outbreaks tied to their use, but the Food and Drug Administration finally took steps Wednesday to limit the use of antibiotics to raise farm animals. It's a move that could eventually reduce the possibility of antibiotic-resistant disease outbreak, a real threat to our food supply and public health.

The agency took what it called “significant steps to address antimicrobial resistance,” issuing a plan to phase out the use of antibiotics to promote growth in farm animals used for food. That’s important because the US uses about 29 million pounds of antibiotics in food production, about 80 percent of all antibiotics used annually in the United States.

If you haven’t noticed, there’s been a huge uptick in cases of diseases caused by antibiotic resistant microbes, a trend experts have said is due to the overprescription of antibiotics and the lack of new ones. So far, the United States has largely avoided major “superbug” outbreaks, but that seems to be due to luck more than anything else.

Wednesday’s guidance doesn’t outrightly ban the use of preventative antibiotics in raising livestock, but it may, eventually, end their use as a growth promoter. Like all FDA guidances, Wednesday’s announcement is not legally binding and animal drug companies will have to decide whether or not to comply with it. Fortunately, two of the largest companies, Zoetis and Elanco, have said that they will comply, and, under the guidance, generic drug companies will have to follow suit.

“The documents include strong and clear language on reigning in disease-prevention uses and they’re effectively banning their use for growth promotion,” Laura Rogers, director of PEW Charitable Trusts' division on Human Health and Industrial Farming, said. “This is a huge step in the right direction.”

Not everyone was impressed with the voluntary nature of the FDA’s decision, which was partially mandated by a federal judge in March of 2012, three years after the FDA began working on the guidance. Steven Roach, senior analyst at Keep Antibiotics Working, a group strongly opposed to the preventative use of antibiotics in livestock, said groups may sidestep the FDA’s guidance.

“KAW is happy that the FDA has finalized this document, so that we can see whether it actually works,” Roach said. “Our fear however is that there will be no reduction in antibiotic use as companies will either ignore the plan altogether or simply switch from using antibiotics for routine growth promotion to using the same antibiotics for routine disease prevention.”

In a press release, the FDA said that “certain antimicrobials have historically been used in the feed or drinking water of cattle, poultry, hogs, and other food animals for production purposes such as using less food to gain weight. Some of these antimicrobials are important drugs used to treat human infection, prompting concerns about the contribution of this practice to increasing the ability of bacteria and other microbes to resist the effects of a drug.”

There’s evidence that has already happened. In February 2012, a study published in mBio suggested that a strain of MRSA known as CC398 that has been known to infect farm workers developed its antimicrobial resistance in livestock. According to that study, the bacteria was detected in roughly half of all meat samples from around the country. An analysis published by Consumer Reports in November 2012 suggested that nearly 70 percent of pork chops and ground pork had antibiotic-resistant bacteria living in them. The CDC has blamed outbreaks of drug-resistant salmonella on the overuse of antibiotics in livestock.

In 2006, the European Union banned the use of antibiotics in livestock for non-therapeutic uses. A case study by researchers at Iowa State University suggested that a ban increased the cost of raising an individual pig in Denmark by about $4.50 in the first year. They suggested that the ban, if enacted in the United States, would lead to retail price increases of roughly 2 percent.

“The end result is a slightly smaller US pork industry, as slightly higher retail prices would lead to lower consumption,” the report suggested.

Even if farmers and drug companies comply with the FDA’s guidance, the threat of drug-resistant diseases jumping from animals to humans will remain a threat until new antibiotics are developed and existing ones are used only when they are truly necessary, Rogers said.

“The FDA needs to act a lot faster. They started this work back in 2009 and it was finalized today,” she said. “We don’t have that kind of time when it comes to antibiotics. We need to work like our hair is on fire.”