Search Site   
News Stories at a Glance
Michigan soybean grower visits Dubai to showcase U.S. products
Scientists are interested in eclipse effects on crops and livestock
U.S. retail meat demand for pork and beef both decreased in 2023
Iowa one of the few states to see farms increase in 2022 Ag Census
Trade, E15, GREET, tax credits the talk at Commodity Classic
Ohioan travels to Malta as part of US Grains Council trade mission
FFA members learn about Australian culture, agriculture during trip
Timing of Dicamba ruling may cause issues for 2024 planting
Bill in Kentucky legislature could bring Kentucky its first vet school
Ag census: U.S. lost 142,000 farms, 20 million acres in five years
Indiana farmers make trip to Indonesia to talk soybeans
   
Archive
Search Archive  
   
FDA: Veterinarians should be in on livestock antibiotic decisions

By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER
Ohio Correspondent

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is making changes to ensure medically important drugs in human medicine are only being used to treat animal health when necessary.
And veterinarians need to be involved in the decision-making, said Dr. Craig Lewis, Office of Foods and Veterinary Medicine, FDA. Some researchers applaud that.
“Antimicrobial resistance is when the bacteria are no longer susceptible to the effects of the drugs which can occur naturally, but can also occur as a result of exposure to the drugs over time,” Lewis said. “We are concerned about the reduced effect of those important drugs to treat illness in humans and animals.”
The FDA has been dealing with this for decades. In unrelated studies published in 2013, researchers found evidence that, generally, people living closer to animal feeding operations and also to fields to which manure was applied were at increased risk for Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection.
One study looked at individuals, mostly farmers at a Veterans Administration hospital, said Tara Smith, PhD., Kent State University. The research found that living within a mile of hog confinement operations did increase the risk of individuals carrying MRSA. Another study found that living in the community, but not necessarily working on a hog farm, still put someone at a greater risk.
Smith’s research, conducted in Iowa, focused on hogs “because Iowa has a lot of pigs.” she said. Other research conducted in beef feedlots in Texas measured antibiotic-resistant bacteria, not necessarily MRSA but other “superbugs,” she said. “They were able to show that those were not only in soil samples and water outside of these feedlots, but they were airborne hundreds of meters,” Smith explained. “It is a potential with any kind of animal exposure, and especially animals that are given antibiotics throughout their life.”
Other research looked at data from a large health care system in Pennsylvania. Joan Casey, PhD., Health and Society Scholar with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, University of California, was involved in that study. She explained nearly 70 percent of antibiotics in the United States are sold for livestock feed.
“These were people (in the research) that were on average around 23 years of age, so these were otherwise young, healthy people that were coming down with an MRSA infection,” she said. “The research found that people living in municipalities with people working on the farm, but they themselves did not, had about 2.5 times the risk of developing these infections.”
Casey would like to see antibiotics removed from animal feed for non-therapeutic purposes – and that is FDA’s goal. Guidances 209 and 213 are to ensure medically important drugs are only used for legitimate animal health needs and that a veterinarian is involved in the decision to use those products, Lewis said.
The FDA is asking the involved drug companies to change the way they’ve labeled the drugs, to remove production uses, such as improved feed efficiency or rate of weight gain. Drug companies are also requested to switch from over-the-counter access to one that requires oversight or prescription status.
Once the product labels are changed, those drugs can no longer be used by veterinarians or producers for indications which aren’t on their labels, Lewis explained. “By the end of 2016 and the beginning of 2017, our expectation is that effectively it will be illegal for vets and producers to use these medically important antibiotics ... for production uses and without vet oversight,” he said.
The Veterinary Feed Directive (VFD) is a critical part of the current initiative, Lewis said. This is the tool by which a veterinarian can authorize the use of a drug in animal feed as opposed to an injection, a pill or something given in water, which is done by prescription.
Only 4-5 products are on the VFD; however, on June 3, FDA published the final changes to it and that number will be increased to up to approximately 200 drugs.
“This is the culmination of years of public input,” Lewis said. “The goal is to improve the efficiency of the existing regulation, to facilitate the increased oversight of medicated feed while still maintaining the public health protections that that regulation is intended to achieve.”
The VFD changes will take effect in October. For more information, visit http://1.usa.gov/1LqSvdn
7/22/2015