A bill now circulating in the House, sponsored by Rep. Denise Slaughter (D.-NY), would limit the amount of antibiotics that can be used on factory animal farms.
There’s good news and bad news on that front. The bad news: “The farm lobby’s opposition makes its passage unlikely,” The New York Times reported Monday. The farm lobby’s opposition is like that. But The Times should be more precise: it’s really the agribusiness lobby—representing a few large companies—that wields power.
Ok, now to the good news: Obama’s FDA has come out in support of restricting antibiotics. FDA official Joshua Sharfstein testified at a hearing sponsored by Slaughter that the agency will seek to limit antibiotic use on factory farms.
That marks a sea change. Until now, the FDA had been silent on the problem of antibiotic-resistant pathogens that develop on factory farms—even as evidence of their existence piled up.
Prevention magazine recently ran a pretty amazing story laying out the importance of the issue. The piece focused on MRSA, an antibiotic-resistant superbug that now kills more Americans every year than AIDS.
A growing body of research links MRSA to confined animal feedlot operations (CAFOs), where animals receive regular doses of antibiotics. The U.S. government has (until Sharfstein’s testimony) cravenly ignored the link.