The Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently issued the most welcome news that it will be implementing a voluntary plan known as Guidance 213, instructing the agricultural industry to phase out the use of certain antibiotics added to animal feed to help them livestock gain weight faster on less food. The FDA reports that so far nearly all drug companies that make antibiotics for use in animal feed said they would remove the words “growth promotion” from their labels, effectively making it illegal for farmers and ranchers to administer the drugs for that purpose.
For years the FDA knew about, but ignored, evidence that the use of antibiotics on factory farms is harmful to humans and did nothing to stop their use. Routine sub-therapeutic feeding of antibiotics—particularly those containing penicillin and tetracycline, which are termed “medically important” because they are used to treat human diseases —has promoted the rapid rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Many bacteria are developing cross resistance, where the bacteria becomes resistant to multiple drugs, rendering untreatable infections caused by eating the bacteria in improperly cooked meat.
