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Issue Brief
Joint letter on State of the Science Regarding Antibiotic Use in Food Animals
Sound Science: Antibiotic Use in Food Animals Leads to Drug Resistant Infections in People
Dear Senator/Representative:
The undersigned medical and public health organizations wish to clarify misinformation and confusion about the state of scientific knowledge concerning the contribution of animal agriculture to human antibiotic resistance.
Recent statements made on the House floor called into question forty years’ worth of peer‐reviewed scientific literature, suggesting this body of evidence is not “hard science.” These statements took aim at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), claiming the agency lacks scientific proof to support addressing antibiotic (or antimicrobial) misuse in food animal production. H. Res. 98, introduced in February, also questions FDA’s scientific basis for decision‐making. On the contrary, the evidence is so strong of a link between misuse of antibiotics in food animals and human antibiotic resistance that FDA and Congress should be acting much more boldly and urgently to protect these vital drugs for human illness. In fact, government data show that the vast majority of antibiotics in the U.S. are sold for use in food animals, not people.
Below are highlights from the significant body of literature on the human health threat posed by antibiotic misuse in food animals, including recent federal agency testimony, government summary reviews of peer‐reviewed journal articles and individual examples from within the literature.
Download the PDF to read the full letter.
Pew Charitable Trusts today applauded Senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and Susan Collins (R-ME), for introducing the Antimicrobial Data Collection Act, which would require the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, to report more information on the annual sales of antibiotics used among industrial farm animals. The bipartisan bill would also give the agency a deadline to finalize policies proposed last year to eliminate the use of antibiotics for growth promotion purposes in meat production.
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"As a nation, we need to exercise greater care with our use of antibiotics, in both humans and animals, so that these medications remain effective in treating serious bacterial infections."
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On April 23, chefs from across the country traveled to Washington to ask Congress to eliminate the overuse of antibiotics in meat and poultry production.
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On April 16, more than 50 moms, dads, chefs, farmers, and pediatricians came to Washington to call on Congress and the Obama administration to protect the public from superbugs by eliminating the overuse of antibiotics in food animal production.
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SuperChefs Against Superbugs, an initiative of the Pew Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming, is a movement of chefs who want to stop the overuse of antibiotics in food animal production. On April 23, the following seven chefs visited Capitol Hill to explain why they serve meat and poultry raised without antibiotics.
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