Antibiotics
sales for use in U.S. farm animals dropped in 2016: FDA
Send a link to a friend
[December 08, 2017] By
Theopolis Waters
CHICAGO (Reuters) - The sale and
distribution of antibiotics approved for use in food-producing animals
in the United States decreased by 10 percent from 2015 to 2016, a U.S.
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) report said on Thursday.
|
It was the first decline in year-to-year sales since the FDA began
collecting the data in 2009, according to food and consumer health
groups.
For years scientists have warned that the regular use of antibiotics
to promote growth and prevent illness in healthy farm animals fuels
dangerous, antibiotic-resistant "superbug" infections in
people.Major U.S. food companies including McDonald's and Tyson
Foods have stepped up efforts to curtail, and in some cases
eliminate, antibiotics in their products.
"Actions speak louder than words, and the most action we've seen on
antibiotics has come from food companies," said Matthew Wellington,
Antibiotics Program Director of public interest campaigning group
U.S. PIRG. "We're cheering this good news."

Last month, the World Health Organization urged farmers to
completely stop using antibiotics to enhance growth and prevent
disease in healthy animals.
An estimated 70 percent of the kinds of antibiotics that are also
used to fight human infections and in surgery are sold in the United
States for use in meat production.
In 2016, sales and distribution of those medically important
antibiotics for food production fell 14 percent, the FDA said.
Medically important antimicrobials accounted for 60 percent of the
domestic sales of all antimicrobials approved for use in farm
animals in 2016, the agency said.
The FDA's data show chicken accounting for 6 percent of medically
important antibiotic sales, with swine at 37 percent and cattle at
43 percent.
[to top of second column] |

Avinash Kar, senior attorney at environmental activist group the
Natural Resources Defense Council, said the overall decline offers a
"glimmer of hope" that the growing epidemic of drug-resistant
infections can be beaten.
While Kar attributed the progress to significant changes undertaken
by the chicken industry, he said the pork and beef sectors lag
behind.
Tyson Foods, the nation's leading meat producer, this year became
the world's largest producer of no-antibiotic-ever chicken, the
company said in an e-mail to Reuters on Thursday.
Tyson said it was working with independent farmers to reduce
human-use antibiotics from its beef and pork supply chain.
(Reporting By Theopolis Waters, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)
[© 2017 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2017 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

 |