Tornado Alley (PROG)

[StephanieVanbryce]

Feeding antibiotics to livestock is bad for humans, but Congress won’t stop it

By Melinda Henneberger, Published: October 22 2013

The farm and pharmaceutical lobbies have blocked all meaningful efforts to reduce the use of antibiotics in raising livestock in the United States, a practice that contributes to an increasingly urgent public health risk, a study released Tuesday found.

Congress has killed every effort to restrict the feeding of farm animals the same antibiotics used in human medicine, the study says, even as antibiotics have grown less effective in treating infection. And regulation has gotten weaker under the Obama administration.

“Our worst fears were confirmed,’’ said Bob Martin, executive director of the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, which issued the report. The Food and Drug Administration’s statistics, he said, show that as much as 80 percent of the antibiotics sold in this country are fed to food animals.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a report last month that found that 23,000 people die from antibiotic-resistant infections each year. The more a particular germ is exposed to antibiotics, the more rapidly it can develop resistance. Most scientists agree that overprescribing the drugs to humans is the predominant cause for bacteria evolving to outsmart them. Feeding the drugs widely to control and prevent disease in cows, pigs and chickens also is believed to play a role.

Tuesday’s study, “Industrial Food Animal Production in America,” comes five years after a landmark report on industry practices by a Pew Charitable Trusts commission of scientists working through the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Feeding animals antibiotics for breakfast, lunch and dinner plumps them up at a terrible cost, the 2008 report said, making drugs ever-less effective and bacteria more resistant.

Peg, there's more. much more. But what's the use? .. I can't see one. If it's good for Americans, they block it. It it's bad for Americans, they make it worse and pass it ... and so it goes
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/feeding-antibiotics-to-cows-is-bad-for-humans-but-congress-wont-stop-it-new-report-says/2013/10/22/ecd2de08-3afd-11e3-a94f-b58017bfee6c_story.html

And you want a real laugh, Peg? .. cripes.. Look at this!__Dec. 2013: FDA finalizes voluntary rules on phasing out certain antibiotics in livestock

What a hoot!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/fda-finalizes-voluntary-rules-on-phasing-out-certain-antibiotics-in-livestock/2013/12/11/e64ca05c-61e8-11e3-8beb-3f9a9942850f_story.html