Source: Dani Friedland, MEATINGPLACE, 6/28/13
A group of senators led by Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) Thursday introduced a bill that would further regulate the use of antibiotics in agriculture.
The Preventing Antibiotic Resistance Act of 2013 directs the FDA to restrict the use of human antibiotics in an attempt to fight antibiotic resistance. Drug companies and agriculture producers would have to demonstrate that antibiotics are used only to treat clinically diagnosable diseases.
The legislation would only apply to drugs that are used in human medicine, and veterinarians and farmers would be able to use “all available antibiotics” to treat animals that are sick or are likely to become sick in what the bill calls "specific, non-customary situations."
“Antibiotics are the closest thing to a ‘silver bullet’ in human medicine given their ability to wipe out a wide variety of bacterial infections, but we are in danger of losing this weapon in the fight against infectious diseases,” said Feinstein, in a statement. “The irresponsible use of antibiotics is dangerous, and tens of thousands of people in the U.S. die each year from antibiotic-resistant infections. We must preserve the efficacy of these life-saving drugs by carefully restricting their overuse in our agriculture products.”
Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) are co-sponsors of the measure. More than 375 groups support the bill, Feinstein's office said, including the American Medical Association, the American Public Health Association, and the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
The Humane Society of the United States and the Humane Society Veterinary Medical Association also support the bill. Some 125 individual veterinary professionals have also signed an HSVMA-sponsored petition in support of federal legislation to phase out “routine non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in farm animals,” the groups said.
