STEVE ROACH , SAFE AND HEALTHY FOOD PROGRAM DIRECTOR, FOOD ANIMAL CONCERNS TRUST

Everyone has to eat, and we often make decisions about what to eat based on our values. For some people, this means becoming a vegetarian or buying humanely raised products. Many people also seek out meat from animals that have been raised without antibiotics both because it is healthier individually and because it also reduces the risk to the community from antibiotic resistance superbugs.

STEVE ROACH , SAFE AND HEALTHY FOOD PROGRAM DIRECTOR, FOOD ANIMAL CONCERNS TRUST

Data released by the FDA today showed a slight drop (3%) in the sales of medically important antibiotics for use in food-producing animals. This is only the third time that sales have dropped from year to year since data began being collected in 2009. Particularly good were reductions in the use of two classes of drugs, cephalosporins and macrolides. These drugs are considered critically important to human medicine because they are the go-to drugs for infections that people catch from food animals. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that these drugs not be used at all in animals, so having sales of them go down is important.

STEVE ROACH , SAFE AND HEALTHY FOOD PROGRAM DIRECTOR, FOOD ANIMAL CONCERNS TRUST

Feed mills could be an important source of how antibiotics are used on farms. Sales of antibiotics for use in feed are the highest of all sales in the US, outstripping sales in human medicine. Existing Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rules require feed mills to keep records of the amount, reason for use, and the animals receiving them. The rules also require feed mills to make these records available to the agency for inspection and copying. What is lacking is a willingness by the FDA to actually go out and collect these records.

STEVE ROACH , SAFE AND HEALTHY FOOD PROGRAM DIRECTOR & MADELEINE KLEVEN, PROGRAM ASSOCIATE, FOOD ANIMAL CONCERNS TRUST

In 2003, the Animal Drug User Fee Act (ADUFA) was signed into law. It authorizes the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to collect fees from the animal drug industry in exchange for, “expediting the animal drug development process and the review of new and supplemental animal drug applications.” In short, the law directs the FDA to charge fees to the animal drug makers in order to speed up and streamline animal drug approvals and set targets for how quickly the FDA takes to review drugs. The program gives the drug makers significant power over the FDA because it requires the FDA to negotiate with the animal drug industry every five years on how the collected fees will be used, and the fees make up a large part of the FDA’s budget related to the regulation of animal drugs.

STEVE ROACH , FOOD SAFETY PROGRAM DIRECTOR, FOOD ANIMAL CONCERNS TRUST

The overuse of antibiotics in food animals helps fuel the development and spread of antibiotic resistant superbugs. These superbugs kill someone every fifteen minutes in the United States and pose a huge threat to global public health.

The overuse of antibiotics is a large problem in the United States. By volume of sales almost two-thirds of medically important antibiotics - antibiotics that are used for treating both animal and human infections- in the U.S. are given to food animals. These drugs are often given as insurance against possible future diseases instead of being given for the treatment of diagnosed illnesses. This method represents antibiotic overuse because the amount of animals receiving drugs is much higher compared to the amount of animals that would receive drugs if farms waited for signs of disease before distributing antibiotics. If farmers can predict whether or not an animal will get sick, then they should be implementing practices to keep them healthy rather than preventatively giving them antibiotics. Food production animals require healthier homes and better food.

STEVE ROACH , FOOD SAFETY PROGRAM DIRECTOR, FOOD ANIMAL CONCERNS TRUST

FDA just released its annual report on sales of antibiotics for use in food producing animals. The big take away is that sales of medically important antibiotics continue to rise (3% between 2018 and 2019). This is dangerous because antibiotic overuse in animals leads to antibiotic resistant superbugs that cause difficult to treat infections in humans and animals. This is the second consecutive year that antibiotic sales have increased, following drops in 2016 and 2017. Prior to 2016, there were five years of increases in sales. In order to adequately contain the threat of superbugs we need additional drops in sales rather than increases.