Source:  MEATINGPLACE, 11/3/14

Many doctors are concerned about the meat industry using antibiotics for growth promotion and disease prevention in healthy animals, according to a new poll by Consumer Reports.

A large majority — 93 percent — of doctors who participated in the survey said they were concerned about the antibiotic uses in livestock.

Consumer Reports in September conducted an online survey of 500 U.S. family practice and internal medicine physicians who regularly prescribe antibiotics, using a random sample drawn from data managed by an outside research firm.

More than a third of the doctors polled said they have had a patient die or suffer significant complications within the last year from a multi-drug-resistant infection. Eighty percent of doctors in the poll said their hospital or practice is actively working to minimize the inappropriate prescribing of antibiotics.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned that overuse of antibiotics in livestock is making the medications less effective for treating disease in people.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is calling for drug companies to remove from product labels on medically important antimicrobials the indications for uses related to growth promotion in animals, and to place therapeutic uses under the oversight of a veterinarian by December 2016.

All 26 drug companies affected by the FDA guidance have agreed to follow it.

“Patients’ lives are at risk as once-curable infections no longer respond to antibiotics, much of which is due to the overuse of these medically critical drugs,” said Dr. Dan Uslan, infectious disease specialist at UCLA Medical Center, in a press release.

“We must confront this problem in humans as well as animals before we lose the use of these critical drugs for good.”
Consumers Union, the advocacy arm of Consumer Reports, has delivered a letter signed by over 2,000 medical professionals to the Trader Joe’s grocery store chain asking the company to sell only meat from animals raised without the routine use of antibiotics.

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