Your Mom Wants Antibiotic Regulation for Food Animals

With Mother's Day coming up, it seems an appropriate time to hear what moms have to say. With that in mind, the Pew Charitable Trusts just released a study that looked into how moms feel about antibiotics used in meat production. An overwhelming 80 percent responded that they are concerned about antibiotic use on factory farms. In fact, when the moms interviewed were presented with seven proposed regulations to control antibiotic use in livestock, 78 percent supported implementing all seven rules.

Factory meat farm operations use antibiotics not just when animals become ill, but also to promote extra growth and simply to guard against the filthy conditions inherently present in a factory farm system. These sub-therapeutic doses lead to resistant strains of bacteria that end up in our food system. An appalling 80% of  our antibiotics go to the livestock industry.

Surprisingly, according to the Pew study, this is not a partisan issue either. In fact Republicans—a group routinely in favor of deregulation—interviewed supported regulation even slightly more so than Democrats interviewed.

Of course moms aren't the only group of people concerned about antibiotics in meat. Change.org members have been clamoring for reform--more than 300 members have sent letters urging the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to protect us with regulations. The journal Scientific American published an editorial stating that the U.S. should follow Denmark and kick our low-dose antibiotic addiction on factory pig farms where workers are more likely to contract the serious infection methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus. The Center for Disease Control and the World Heath Organization both cite major concerns with antibiotic resistance. Even kids are concerned. This eleven year old activist won his school's science fair by testing meat from his local supermarkets for antibiotics. In 2010, the FDA's own Deputy Commissioner told a Congressional Subcommittee, "FDA believes the overall weight of evidence available to date supports the conclusion that using medically important antimicrobial drugs for production purposes is not in the interest of protecting and promoting the public health.”  So what's the hold up, FDA? You have the power to create enforceable rules for antibiotic use in livestock. Why does the industry have you still dragging your feet?

If the FDA continues to allow antibiotic use in food animals as it does now, this marks a gigantic failure of its duty to protect public health. The organization created to protect us is sitting back and hoping that voluntary guidelines to the industry will do the trick. Asking the meat industry nicely to change on its own is completely ineffectual. The FDA should be embarrassed when even fast food chain restaurants like Chipotle are putting more effort into tracking the antibiotics in our food than it is. Sign our petition and demand that the FDA create antibiotic regulation for food animals. Our health depends on it.

Photo credit: Cia de Foto via Flickr