Source: Michael Fielding, MEATINGPLACE, 11/10/11

The Food and Drug Administration has rejected two petitions to ban antibiotics from being used in food animal production.

Wednesday’s decision was a blow to a coalition – made up of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Environmental Defense, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Public Health Association, Food Animal Concerns Trust (FACT) and the Union of Concerned scientists – that filed petitions in 1999 and again in 2005 asking the agency to withdrawal its approval of certain antimicrobial drugs.

In its denial letter the FDA acknowledged that its “experience with contested, formal withdrawal proceedings is that the process can consume extensive periods of time and agency resources.”

For example, the withdrawal of enrofloxacin in poultry – an FDA-approved antibiotic used for subtherapeutic use in poultry that eventually was found to promote antibiotic resistant strains of Campylobacter – took almost five years and cost more than $3 million.

In other cases it has taken decades. It took 20 years, from 1971 to 1991, between the time that the first notice of a formal administrative hearing for the antibiotic nitrofuran was issued and the final approval of withdrawal.

“The industry’s irresponsible use of antibiotics in livestock increases the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant pathogens, and those germs can cause infections in humans that are difficult or impossible to treat,” CSPI said in a statement released Wednesday. “The industry has long failed to cooperate voluntarily, and the FDA should take binding action.”

The agency did acknowledge that it is pursuing alternatives to address antimicrobial resistance in animal agriculture but did not offer details.

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