New FDA Numbers Reveal Food Animals Consume Lion’s Share of Antibiotics

Antibiotics, one of the world's greatest medical discoveries, are slowly losing their effectiveness in fighting bacterial infections and the massive use of the drugs in food animals may be the biggest culprit. The growing threat of antibiotic...

December 23, 2011 | Source: Center for a Liveable Future | by Ralph Loglisci

Antibiotics, one of the world’s greatest medical discoveries, are
slowly losing their effectiveness in fighting bacterial infections and
the massive use of the drugs in food animals may be the biggest culprit.
The growing threat of antibiotic resistance is largely due to the
misuse and overuse of antibiotics in both people and animals, which
leads to an increase in “super-bacteria.” However, people use a much
smaller portion of antibiotics sold in this country compared to the
amount set aside for food animals. In fact, according to new data just
released by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), of the antibiotics
sold in 2009 for both people and food animals almost 80% were reserved
for livestock and poultry. A huge portion of those antibiotics were
never intended to fight bacterial infections, rather producers most
likely administered them in continuous low-dosages through feed or water
to increase the speed at which their animals grew. And that has many
public health experts and scientists troubled.

For years scientists concerned about the threat of antibiotic
resistant bacteria in food animal production have been trying to figure
out just how much antibiotics producers are using each year. The best
they could do was come up with rough estimates. That is because the data was never publicly available, until now.

In accordance with a 2008 amendment to the Animal Drug User Fee Act, for the first time the FDA released
last week an annual amount of antimicrobial drugs sold and distributed
for use in food animals. The grand total for 2009 is 13.1 million
kilograms or 28.8 million pounds. I found the stories
covering this revelation interesting, but they did not convey the whole
picture. It is important to understand how this amount compares to the
total available for people. So, I decided to find out for myself and
contacted the FDA for an estimate of the volume of antibiotics sold for
human use in 2009. This is what a spokesperson told me:

“Our Office of Surveillance and Epidemiology just
finished an analysis based on IMS Health data. Sales data in kilograms
sold for selected antibacterial drugs were obtained as a surrogate of
human antibacterial drug use in the U.S. market. Approximately 3.3
million kilograms of antibacterial drugs were sold in year 2009. OSE
states that all data in this analysis have been cleared for public use
by IMS Health, IMS National Sales Perspectives.”

3.3 million kilograms is a little over 7 million pounds. As far as I
can determine, this is the first time the FDA has made data on estimates
of human usage public. Below is a breakdown of the FDA numbers prepared
by my colleague, Dr. David Love, also from the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, which compares the estimated amounts of human usage with food animal usage.

fda-graph

Take a look at the data for tetracycline. More than 10 million pounds
of the antibiotic were sold for the use in food animals. That’s more
than all of the antibiotics combined set aside for humans in 2009. Many studies
suggest the high use of tetracycline in food animals, particularly in
pigs, has lead to the increased rates of bacterial resistance to the
antibiotic, such as Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA.