Adam Klasfeld
Courthouse News Service
MANHATTAN (CN) – A supine Food and Drug Administration is allowing the use of low doses of antibiotics in animal feed to deal with cramped and unsanitary conditions on cattle farms, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists and four other groups, raising the “specter of untreatable infections” just around the corner.
The Natural Resources Defense Council, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the Food Animal Concerns Trust, Public Citizen, and the Union of Concerned Scientists sued the U.S. FDA and its Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, the Center for Veterinary Medicine and its Director Bernadette Dunham, and the Department of Health and Human Services and its Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
The watchdog groups say the FDA first approved feeding of “preventative” antibiotics to healthy livestock in the 1950s. But in 1977, the FDA found that found that “subtherapeutic” doses of penicillin and tetracyclines – at levels too low to treat disease – contributed to development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that could be transferred to humans.
