Source: Michael Fielding, MEATINGPLACE, 9/19/16

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is failing to protect people from the rising health threat of antibiotic resistance, according to a petition filed last week by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and other groups.

Sales of antibiotics to the livestock industry have grown in recent years, despite the FDA’s request for the industry to voluntarily reduce use, NRDC’s petition argues, adding that the FDA’s voluntary policy shows no signs it will work and therefore the agency needs to eliminate the riskiest uses of antibiotics that threaten human health.

FDA created a voluntary program in 2013 to curb the overuse of antibiotics given to farm animals. A panel on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the FDA to pursue the voluntary program instead of immediately withdrawing the use of specific antibiotics.

According to FDA’s own data, the voluntary program, known as Guidance 213, is not working, NRDC argued.

Also last week, the FDA announced that it may recommend that pharmaceutical companies put some limit on the duration of use for some antibiotic products. In a notice published Sept. 12 in the Federal Register, the agency requested information from the public about how to establish appropriately targeted durations of use for the approximately 32 percent of therapeutic products affected by GFI #213 with no defined duration of use in order to foster stewardship of medically important antimicrobial drugs in food-producing animals and help preserve the effectiveness of these antimicrobials in animal and human medicine.
NRDC is joined by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Earthjustice, Food Animal Concerns Trust, Public Citizen, CalPIRG and U.S. PIRG in filing the petition.

The petition may be accessed here.

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