Tell the FDA to Protect People and Animals From Antibiotic Resistance

By Steve Roach and Madeleine Kleven, FACT’s Safe and Healthy Food Team

This week FACT launched an action alert giving everyone the opportunity to write directly to the FDA telling them to protect people and animals from antibiotic resistant infections. A huge part of FACT’s work is advocating for human and animal health and urging the FDA to do more to prevent the development and spread of antibiotic-resistant germs. Germs which cause dangerous, difficult to treat infections. Our primary ask for the FDA is that they limit the excessive overuse of our precious antibiotics in industrial livestock operations. If you take a look at our superbug graphic, you can see that when antibiotics are overused it drives the development of resistance. Some of the ways the FDA can reduce overuse is by limiting how long an antibiotic can be used and for what purpose. The FDA knows this and is currently seeking feedback on a proposal that sets duration limits on certain antibiotics used in animal ag. While it is a step in the right direction, it definitely falls short of what is needed. 

Think about the times you have used antibiotics in your life. Depending on your specific health circumstances, you may have relied on these drugs fairly often, or you may have been prescribed an antibiotic once or twice after a dental procedure or an infection you can’t quite kick on your own. Now imagine you went to the doctor and they prescribed you an antibiotic that you could use continuously whether or not you were sick, for practically your entire life. That would be crazy! Currently, the FDA allows that for animals. In fact, many antibiotics can be fed to an animal for their whole life even if they never present signs of clinical disease. This is a huge driver of antibiotic resistance and from an animal welfare point of view, a considerable problem. It allows huge livestock operations to keep animals in crowded, unhealthy conditions with poor diets by covering up the issues with continuous feeding of antibiotics. An example is the use of the antibiotic tylosin, which is related to the human drug azithromycin. It is fed to cattle for the whole time the animal is on the feedlot to counter the problems created by inappropriate diets that are high in grains. Cattle given a healthier diet do not require this excessive use. 

What is the FDA proposing to fix this problem? 

While the FDA wants to set duration limits on how long some of these drugs can be used, unfortunately, the FDA is still allowing the use of antibiotics for disease prevention. Their approach also allows drug companies to decide how long a drug can be used in farm animals - as long as it is not the whole life of an animal. This completely ignores the risk of resistance that comes from long durations and never addresses the root cause of much of the antibiotic use - poor conditions for animals.

What can you do? 

You can use our online portal to submit a message directly to the FDA, telling them to make sure their proposal sufficiently protects public health and truly limits the overuse of antibiotics by large-scale industrial feeding operations. They can do this by limiting the use of an antibiotic to no more than 21 days. If a drug company determines that 21 days is not a long enough period of time to treat the animal, then the company must provide evidence that their suggested duration is safe, effective, and above all, does not increase the development of antibiotic resistant germs. Secondly, the FDA must follow international World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines and prohibit preventive use, only allowing the use of antibiotics when an animal is sick or injured.

Thank you for your support on this issue! Follow this link to access the action alert and send a message to the FDA before their docket closes on January 5th.