Ticking time bomb. End of modern medicine. Urgent danger. This is how the world sees the problem of antibiotic resistance, but in the United States, in part due to politics of the day, with abundant backing from lobbyists, crucial regulations are missing despite the scientific alarms.
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Many believe that the new FDA guidelines will likely fail to change how antibiotics are used in food animals and will not stem the public health crisis of increasing antibiotic resistance. 
Even if horrific images and stories about CAFOs do not tug at your heart-strings, and you close your eyes at the externalized costs of CAFOs and believe that veganism is something reserved for denizens of Los Angeles, New York and Portland, it is no longer possible to ignore how what happens out of sight in CAFOs impacts human health. 
One of the causes of antibiotic resistance in humans is the overuse of antibiotics on industrial animal farms. Despite the urgent public health crisis, neither the FDA nor lawmakers have stemmed the overuse of such important medicines for purposes of growth and disease prevention, not treatment. Public Employees For Environmental Responsibility sued for the release of FDA’s records that would demonstrate the effectiveness of the agency’s voluntary approach of phasing out the use of medically important antibiotics on animal farms. Guess what they revealed. 
Last week House Rep. Henry Waxman, the ranking Democrat on the Energy and Commerce committee, announced plans to introduce a new animal antibiotic use legislation. 
A posted announcement by the U.S. Department of Agriculture caused quite a stir on Wednesday when it appeared to embrace the “Meatless Monday” campaign until it heard from the beef industry. Oops! 
The FDA took long-overdue steps towards curbing the overuse of antibiotics in farm animals aimed to preserve effectiveness of antibiotics. Unfortunately, the measures remain voluntary and industry compliance remains to be seen. 
Nearly 35 years ago, the Food and Drug Administration initiated proceedings to withdraw the approval of the subtherapeutic use of certain antibiotics in agricultural animals but it took a Court Order to force the agency to follow through. 
U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an order to restrict unapproved use of cephalosporin class of antibiotics in farm animals. Many, however, are critical of the agency’s decision to regulate a practice that is already in decline. 
Report finds tremendous concentration of businesses controlling chicken production over the last 50 years. Combined with America’s insatiable hunger for chicken, this has led to tremendous waste disposal problems as well as public health concerns. 
We have been closely following the “ag gag” bills that are cropping up across the country criminalizing the undercover taking of farm videos and photographs. New York is the latest state to consider a bill that would impose more stringent sanctions on those revealing animal abuse than the abusers themselves. 
New FDA data shows that almost 80% of all antibiotics sold in 2009 were reserved for animal farming. Part two of our series on antibiotic overuse in healthy farm animals examines the response from the FDA and the proposed legislation. Follow the money and you will see that the meat and the GMO industry are inextricably tied. 
The practice of feeding antibiotics to healthy farm animals is widespread among industrial animal farm operators despite warnings of many medical experts. |
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