CSPI supports the FDA objective of developing an antimicrobial use monitoring system for
food-producing animals, as such a system is the foundation for efforts to promote antimicrobial
stewardship and limit the development of antimicrobial resistance in the food animal production
industry.
Today, the Food and Drug Administration released the 2020 Summary Report on Antimicrobials Sold or Distributed for Use in Food-Producing Animals, which showed sales levels close to those from recent years. These data have been compiled annually since 2011 as part of a regulatory reaction to the role of veterinary antimicrobial use in the development of resistance.
Each year, at least 2.8 million U.S. residents get an antibiotic-resistant infection, and more than 35,000 die, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Food and Drug Administration's most recent annual report on antimicrobial use in agriculture sends a disappointing message: although sales remain down from historic highs, the declines of recent years appear to have been arrested and may even have been reversed. Overall sales of medically important antibiotics for use in food-producing animals rose by 9 percent between 2017 and 2018, with the biggest proportion of that increase coming from use of tetracyclines in swine and cattle.
The nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest today submitted a request under the Freedom of Information Act urging officials at the U.S. Department of Agriculture to release the test results from slaughterhouses and processing establishments whose products have tested positive for strains of multidrug-resistant Salmonella tied to two recent outbreaks: a raw turkey outbreak that is still ongoing and a raw chicken outbreak that recently ended.
The U.S. ban on using antibiotics for growth promotion and restrictions on over-the-counter use went into full effect in January 2017. Now, we are seeing the striking results that those changes have had on our food production system, with sales down 33 percent since the changes went into effect in January 2017 and 43 percent since sales peaked in 2015.
Getting sick from foodborne bacteria is bad enough, but it becomes a terrifying prospect if your illness does not respond to treatment with antibiotics. That’s the concern with the current outbreak of antibiotic-resistant Salmonella Reading linked to a surprisingly wide variety of turkey products.
