December saw the Center for Food Safety (CFS), a group that seeks to curb the “use of harmful food production technologies”, and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy file a petition with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) calling for the immediate withdrawal of approvals for all animal drug applications for arsenic compounds used in animal feed.
The call follows the announcement from US Representative Steve Israel of legislation calling for a ban on the use of the arsenical compound roxarsone in poultry feed. The bill, the “Poison-Free Poultry Act 2009”, has been applauded by the two groups, but they maintain that it does not go far enough. Their petition not only calls for a ban on roxarsone, but also on Arsanilic acid, Nitarsone, and Carbarsone.
It was back in March that Representative Louise M Slaughter introduced the “Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act” (PAMTA) into the US House of Representatives, designed to phase out the non-therapeutic use in livestock of medically important antibiotics.
She said: “My legislation will limit the use of antibiotics on our livestock to ensure that we are not inadvertently creating antibiotic–resistant disease that we can’t fight with modern medicine.”
She continued: “Unfortunately, over the past several years, the widespread practice of using antibiotics to promote livestock growth and compensate for unsanitary, crowded conditions has led to the emergence of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria and other germs, rendering many of our most powerful drugs ineffective.
“The practice of over-using antibiotics in animal feed is certainly contributing to the rise of antibiotic bacteria.”
Sound science?
Of course, there are two sides to every argument. The Coalition for Animal Health, a grouping of veterinarians, animal production and feed associations, wrote to the House of Representatives asking that PAMTA be resisted.
They argued that numerous risk assessments, including one conducted by the FDA, had shown that risk levels associated with antibiotic use in agriculture are extremely low. In fact, they said, other nationally-recognised scientific studies had shown that the removal of such medicines could actually increase food safety risks.
They continued that when Europe removed some uses of antibiotics, the result was devastating to animal health. In response to the increase in disease and death among farm animals, producers had to administer an even greater amount of antibiotics therapeutically.
The Coalition has supplied material from the Danish government showing that since the ban on in-feed use, while total use fell by 30% between 1997 and 2005, the quantity of antibiotics administered therapeutically rose by 135% between 1996 and 2005. Resistance to some antibiotics decreased in animals, while to others it rose. The Coalition added that there was little evidence to suggest that resistance in humans had decline, which was the purpose of the ban.
US veterinary medicine association, the Animal Health Institute (AHI), notes that several layers of protection have been put in place to ensure that antibiotics are used to keep animals healthy without harm to public health. While it is possible that antibiotic resistant bacteria can develop as a direct result of antibiotic use and can cause resistant infections in humans via food, the Institute says, it is highly improbable.
Sales of antibiotics across all species used for growth and efficiency accounted for 13% of the total in 2007, the AHI reports. This was up from the previous year, in part in response to higher grain prices as animal producers sought to capture both the economic efficiencies and the health benefits derived from in-feed antibiotic use. It also points out that the entire increase in the percentage of the total amount used for growth and efficiency was in ionophores, compounds not used in human medicine.
The AHI adds that political decisions made without careful risk assessment can backfire and harm human health. Emerging evidence documents the unintended consequences that can result when policy decisions about antibiotics use are not driven by science and risk assessment. Studies indicate that the risk of food borne bacteria on meat increases when antibiotics that help suppress animal diseases are removed.
