Phase Out Would Save Valuable Medicines to Treat Infectious Diseases in People
Republished with permission from Union of Concerned Scientists, www.ucsusa.org, August 15, 2003, by Dr. Margaret Mellon, Director of UCS Food and Environment Program
The World Health Organization today joined leading scientists, physicians, and consumer groups in the call for ending the misuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture. With antibiotic resistant infectious diseases on the rise, animal food producers in the United States should follow the example set by their counterparts in Denmark, where chicken, cows and pigs are raised cost-effectively in healthy conditions without growth-promoting antibiotics.
"Unfortunately, meat producers in the United States have long ignored warnings from the scientific community about the overuse of antibiotics. That's why Congress should pass recently introduced bipartisan legislation�co-sponsored by Senators Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Representatives Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Wayne Gilchrest (R-MD)�that would phase out the use of medically important antibiotics for nontherapeutic purposes like growth promotion and routine-disease prevention in animal agriculture.
"Our research estimates that every year in the United States about 25 million pounds of antibiotics and related compounds are used in cattle, swine and poultry, for nontherapeutic purposes. Of that, 4 million pounds of antibiotics are used in cattle, almost 11 million pounds in swine, and 10 million pounds in poultry. By contrast, we estimate that only 3 million pounds of antibiotics are used in human medicine. That means we are using 8 times the amount of antibiotics and related compounds in healthy animals as we are using to treat diseases in our children and ourselves.
"The WHO's call couldn't come at a more important time. Patients once effectively treated for food borne illness or post-operative infections may now have to try several antibiotics before they find one that works. And as more bacterial strains develop resistance, more people will die because effective antibiotics are not identified quickly enough or because the bacteria causing the disease are resistant to all available antibiotics."
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Copyright 2003 NOW Foods
