28.06.2010

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today released draft guidance to help reduce resistance to antibiotics used to treat humans—such as penicillin, tetracycline, and macrolides—with more careful use of the drugs in food-producing animals.The draft outlines the FDA’s current thinking on strategies to assure that antimicrobial drugs that are important for therapeutic use in humans are used judiciously in animal agriculture.
The 19-page draft guidance report focuses on two principles: limiting antimicrobial drugs in food-producing animals to those are needed to ensure animal health and limiting that use to include veterinary oversight or consultation.
The FDA suggests phased-in measures that reduce microbial selection pressure while still maintaining the availability of the drugs for appropriate use.

The guidance, which does not have the force of law but may be treated as such by FDA, is a move to address an increase in antibiotic-resistant illnesses in humans, which opponents of modern animal agriculture blame on the use of antibiotics in livestock and poultry production. But top scientists with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health recently told a U.S. House committee that there is no scientific study linking antibiotic use in food animal production with antibiotic resistance.