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Industry insiders: Antibiotics articles don’t tell a full story

 

 

By KEVIN WALKER

Michigan Correspondent

 

WASHINGTON, D.C. — An investigation by the Thomson Reuters news service raises concerns about the use of antibiotics in chickens raised for meat, and for livestock in general.

The articles – published online Sept. 15 under the headline "Farmaceuticals" – use feed tickets as documents to show that antibiotics are allegedly used in ways hidden by the companies raising the chickens. Feed tickets are internal documents poultry companies issue to chicken growers, by the mills that make feed to poultry companies’ specifications, Reuters said in the report.

They list the names and grams per ton of each active drug ingredient in a batch of feed. They disclose the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved purpose of each medication and specify at which stage in a chicken’s 4- to 6-week life the feed is meant.

The articles purport to show antibiotics are overused and that those used for the chickens are sometimes important for human health. It’s not illegal to use such antibiotics for chickens, the report says. It states some of the antibiotics in use have the effect of fattening up the chickens as well, though at least one of the companies examined says that’s not how they’re used.

One poultry company, Tyson, is quoted as saying it is required to list growth promotion on a feed ticket if the medication can have that effect, even if that’s not why it is being used.

The articles broaden the topic by stating 80 percent of all antibiotics used in the United States are given not to people, but to livestock. The articles strongly suggest the use of antibiotics in chickens and other livestock promotes bacterial resistance to those medications in humans.

The routine use of the antibiotics as shown by the feed tickets is astonishing, said Donald Kennedy, a former FDA commissioner, in the published report. He went on to say such widespread use of the drugs for extended periods can create a "systematic source of antibiotic resistance" in bacteria, the risks of which are not fully understood.

"This could be an even larger piece of the antibiotic-resistance problem than I had thought," Kennedy stated.

The following day U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) said she plans to introduce new legislation authorizing the FDA to collect data on "farm-level antibiotic use," according to another Reuters article. Fellow New York Democrat U.S. Rep. Louise Slaughter said in the same article "industry has kept data showing the rampant, dangerous use of antibiotics hidden from the public for one reason: To protect corporate profits at the expense of public health."

What isn’t clear from all of this is if there is a scientifically proven connection between the use of antibiotics in farm animals, including chickens, and the development of bacterial resistance to antibiotics in humans. The National Chicken Council (NCC) responded at length to the Reuters articles.

It stated most of the antibiotics approved for use in raising chickens are not used in human medicine, and those that are will be phased out for growth promotion purposes by December 2016.

"We understand the concern about the use of antibiotics in farm animals and recognize our responsibility to ensure they are properly used for the right reasons to protect the health of animals, humans and the food supply," said Ashley Peterson, NCC vice president of Scientific and Regulatory Affairs. "All antibiotics used to prevent and treat disease in chickens are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

"Only about 10 percent of the feed tickets reviewed by Reuters list antibiotics belonging to medically important drug classes – the exact ones that both the industry and FDA are currently phasing out for growth promotion purposes.

"There are responsible, approved standards of veterinary treatment that benefit animal welfare and human health by reducing the need for heavier doses of antibiotics in the event of widespread disease. Much like a companion animal veterinarian would use deworming compounds to prevent illness in puppies and kittens, chicken producers and veterinarians use compounds to prevent and treat intestinal diseases in the birds they care for in the field.

"Since the article did not contain perspectives from animal scientists or poultry veterinarians, the reader is left without this context and, unfortunately, with hypothetical comments from a few sources," she said.

Christine Hoang, a veterinarian and assistant director of scientific activities at the American Veterinary Medical Assoc., saw the articles and said some of the information in them is unclear and inaccurate.

"Some of the drugs listed in the articles are not used to treat human infections at all," she said. "To focus on the quantity of drugs used is inappropriate because there are dosing differences between how drugs are administered in human medicine as compared to veterinary medicine. You would give a different dose to a 1,000-pound cow versus a 100- to 200-pound person. There are also dosing differences among different kinds of drugs.

"There’s always a risk in creating resistance when you use antibiotics on animals, but the impact is unclear. The drugs have to be used for animal health and the safety of the food supply."

She added it’s important people understand all of the veterinary drugs are going to come under veterinary oversight over the next few years. Currently the amount of such oversight is unclear and varies from farm to farm and from species to species.

9/24/2014