To: Margaret Hamburg, Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration
FDA: Stop Our Antibiotics from Becoming Ineffective
The overuse and misuse of antibiotics on factory farms contributes to the growing prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, making it harder to treat infections and save lives. Please end the overuse of antibiotics on factory farms.
Why is this important?
We're in danger of returning to an age when simple infections are potentially fatal.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, every year more than two million people are hospitalized and 23,000 die because they have been infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
The overuse and misuse of lifesaving antibiotics is causing these drugs to rapidly lose their effectiveness against dangerous infections. The biggest offenders: factory farms that mix antibiotics right into the feed of healthy animals.
In fact, 80 percent of the antibiotics sold in the U.S. are for animals. Big farming operations discovered that giving antibiotics to healthy animals made them fatter, faster. Now many of them put antibiotics into the daily feed of all their livestock, sick or not.
The result? Bacteria that come into contact with these animals mutate and become resistant to antibiotics, and the infections these bacteria cause -- everything from pneumonia to MRSA -- become harder and harder to treat.
The World Health Organization, the American Medical Association, the American Public Health Association, and other leading medical groups all warn that the routine use of antibiotics in food animals presents a serious and growing threat to human health.
Now, in the face of calls for reform, factory farms are spending big money to lobby against any new rules to curtail the overuse of antibiotics.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has the authority to stop the worst overuse of antibiotics on factory farms. It's time for them to act.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, every year more than two million people are hospitalized and 23,000 die because they have been infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
The overuse and misuse of lifesaving antibiotics is causing these drugs to rapidly lose their effectiveness against dangerous infections. The biggest offenders: factory farms that mix antibiotics right into the feed of healthy animals.
In fact, 80 percent of the antibiotics sold in the U.S. are for animals. Big farming operations discovered that giving antibiotics to healthy animals made them fatter, faster. Now many of them put antibiotics into the daily feed of all their livestock, sick or not.
The result? Bacteria that come into contact with these animals mutate and become resistant to antibiotics, and the infections these bacteria cause -- everything from pneumonia to MRSA -- become harder and harder to treat.
The World Health Organization, the American Medical Association, the American Public Health Association, and other leading medical groups all warn that the routine use of antibiotics in food animals presents a serious and growing threat to human health.
Now, in the face of calls for reform, factory farms are spending big money to lobby against any new rules to curtail the overuse of antibiotics.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has the authority to stop the worst overuse of antibiotics on factory farms. It's time for them to act.