The FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine’s Eroding Focus on Protecting Consumers

STEVE ROACH AND MADELEINE KLEVEN, SAFE AND HEALTHY FOOD TEAM, FOOD ANIMAL CONCERNS TRUST

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and its Center of Veterinary Medicine (CVM) were created as public health agencies with the regulatory goal of making sure that drugs for humans or animals cannot be sold unless they are safe and effective. Under pressure from the regulated industry and elected officials, this original public health mission has been eroded. Now the Center for Veterinary Medicine whose primary reason for existence is to make sure animal drugs are safe both for animals and people prioritizes “spur[ring] the development of new technologies” over making sure people are not harmed by existing technologies. The CVM is becoming more and more like the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) with dual roles of both regulating and promoting U.S. agriculture. Like the USDA, this means the CVM too often prioritizes the regulated industry over protecting public health.

The FDA Needs to Collect Critical Data on Antibiotic Use on Farms

MADELEINE KLEVEN SAFE & HEALTHY FOOD PROGRAM ASSOCIATE, FOOD ANIMAL CONCERNS TRUST

Join us in telling the FDA to collect vital data on the use of antibiotics in food-producing animals. 

Antibiotic use, especially overuse in animal agriculture, is a primary selective force behind the emergence of antibiotic resistant bacteria. In order to combat the spread of resistance, antibiotic stewardship - stopping the overuse of antibiotics - is essential. However, veterinary antibiotic use and stewardship cannot be optimized without measurement. It is impossible to know if efforts to reduce the overuse of antibiotics are effective or creating meaningful change over time, if there is no actual data on how antibiotics are being used.

As the FDA Winds up its Five-Year Stewardship Plan, New Data Indicates the Potential for Large Increases in Antibiotic Use.

STEVE ROACH, SAFE & HEALTHY FOOD PROGRAM DIRECTOR, FOOD ANIMAL CONCERNS TRUST

We are fast approaching the 100th anniversary of the discovery of antibiotics. In 1928, Alexander Fleming discovered the antibacterial properties of penicillin. That discovery revolutionized medicine by making previously untreatable bacterial infections easily treatable. Now after less than 100 years, those treatment gains are being lost to the spread of antibiotic-resistant superbugs. While penicillin is still used today and remains effective for treating some infections, it simply no longer works in many others, leaving doctors with little choice but to reach for alternative, newer antibiotics. Too often these newer antibiotics also fail, leaving serious, difficult, and sometimes impossible to treat infections. Resistance spreads because we overuse antibiotics both in human medicine and to produce food animals. However, many more antibiotics are used in animals than in people.  

FDA Still Sluggish On The Superbug Crisis

STEVE ROACH, SAFE & HEALTHY FOOD PROGRAM DIRECTOR, FOOD ANIMAL CONCERNS TRUST

This blog was originally published as an OpED in the online journal The Messenger on July 7, 2023.

The recent independent expert panel review of the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Human Foods Program found “a culture of indecisiveness and inaction” within the FDA, where “decision-making is unacceptably slow,” appearing “sluggish and non-responsive to public health concerns,” and suffering from “an aversion to risk that undercuts its public health mandate.” While these criticisms were directed at the broader food program, they also apply to the FDA’s response to the urgent crisis of antibiotic-resistant superbugs. The FDA is supposed to protect the American people, so is the agency dragging its feet?

Here's What You Should Know About Antibiotic Cross-Resistance and Co-Resistance

MADELEINE KLEVEN SAFE & HEALTHY FOOD PROGRAM ASSOCIATE, FOOD ANIMAL CONCERNS TRUST

In the Safe and Healthy Food Program’s work we talk a lot about antibiotic resistance - when a bacterial organism can no longer be killed by the antibiotics normally used to treat that bacterial infection. On a big picture level, the overuse of antibiotics, especially in industrial farming is a main driver of antibiotic resistance. This is a big problem, especially for those antibiotics which are medically important - used in both animals and humans.

Antibiotic resistance disproportionately impacts women’s health

MADELEINE KLEVEN SAFE & HEALTHY FOOD PROGRAM ASSOCIATE, FOOD ANIMAL CONCERNS TRUST

Next week (May 14-20) is Women’s Health week. This year’s theme is “Women's Health, Whole Health: Prevention, Care and Wellbeing”. This is a meaningful week encouraging women and girls everywhere to prioritize their health and wellness. Amidst the pandemic and other social turbulence, it is more important than ever to take a few deep breaths and focus on your physical and mental health. It is also critical that we push for policies and legislation that promote the health of women and in turn support healthier communities as a whole.

Strong Leadership From HHS is Needed to Preserve our Antibiotics and Protect Public Health

MADELEINE KLEVEN SAFE & HEALTHY FOOD PROGRAM ASSOCIATE, FOOD ANIMAL CONCERNS TRUST

Today, Food Animal Concerns Trust and 24 colleagues and ally organizations on behalf of the Keep Antibiotics Working Coalition sent a letter to the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), Xavier Becerra, urging his immediate action in addressing the antibiotic resistance crisis.

This crisis causes approximately 1.27 million deaths globally each year and kills someone in the United States every 15 minutes. Despite these staggering numbers, and the ongoing spread of deadly antibiotic resistant superbugs - dangerous sometimes fatal infections that no longer respond to the antibiotics previously used to treat them - the U.S. response has fallen short on curbing its chief driver – widespread and avoidable overuse of these precious medicines. While antibiotic overuse exists in the human health sector, unmitigated and blatant overuse of antibiotics is occurring in industrial animal agriculture, where poor animal welfare practices are commonplace and antibiotics are used to bolster producer profits versus support for animal health and well-being. With U.S. sales of medically important antibiotics in animals nearly double the sales for human medicine, it is clear where major efforts to preserve antibiotics must be directed. Stopping the exorbitant  overuse of antibiotics in animal ag is key to keeping animals, and in turn humans, healthy. 

Antibiotic Resistance Disproportionately Impacts Vulnerable Populations

Antibiotic Resistance Disproportionately Impacts Vulnerable Populations

MADELEINE KLEVEN SAFE & HEALTHY FOOD PROGRAM ASSOCIATE, FOOD ANIMAL CONCERNS TRUST

Antibiotic resistance threatens to overturn much of the health advances of the twentieth century. As resistant bacteria spreads, more people become sick, more people are hospitalized, and more people die. While everyone is likely to get a resistant infection sooner or later, children, the elderly and those who are immunocompromised or suffering from chronic illness are most impacted. Antibiotic resistance makes health disparities worse, compounding problems caused by marginalization.

The FDA Needs to Move Forward With Protecting Medically Important Antibiotics

The FDA Needs to Move Forward With Protecting Medically Important Antibiotics

MADELEINE KLEVEN & STEVE ROACH, SAFE & HEALTHY FOOD PROGRAM ASSOCIATE & DIRECTOR, FOOD ANIMAL CONCERNS TRUST

A lot of different chemicals and drugs are used in industrial animal agriculture as the meat industry is highly chemically dependent. Medically important antibiotics are one group of drugs that the meat industry relies upon and these can create a real problem when overused. Medically important antibiotics are antibiotics that are used in both animal agriculture and human medicine. When resistance develops to these drugs it is dangerous because they are used to treat everything from eye infections and burns to critical respiratory diseases and surgical infections in people. Currently, we have the opportunity to tell the FDA that we need to preserve these medically important antibiotics for human and animal health.

Looks like McDonald’s New Responsible Use Targets Are Not Responsible At All

STEVE ROACH, SAFE & HEALTHY FOOD PROGRAM DIRECTOR, FOOD ANIMAL CONCERNS TRUST

McDonald’s has been an industry leader among fast food chains on reducing the overuse of antibiotics in its meat supply, but now it seems the company is leading in the wrong direction. The company missed an internal deadline to set antibiotic use reduction targets for its global beef supply by 2020. Then last year, it stopped talking about reduction targets and switched to talking about “responsible use”. Finally, at the end of last year, McDonald’s made public what it is calling responsible use targets. It is not clear at all whether or not these targets are responsible.

A Case for Changing Your Grocery Habits in the New Year

STEVE ROACH, SAFE & HEALTHY FOOD PROGRAM DIRECTOR, FOOD ANIMAL CONCERNS TRUST

We often look at the new year as an opportunity to reevaluate how we’re caring for ourselves. Food Animal Concerns Trust recommends a step you might not have thought of but could make a huge difference to your personal health and that of everyone you love: changing the meat you choose for your dinner table.

FDA’s Antibiotic Stewardship Plan is Failing

DAVID WALLINGA, MD, NRDC SENIOR HEALTH OFFICER, HEALTHY PEOPLE & THRIVING COMMUNITIES. DR. WALLINGA AND NRDC HAVE KINDLY ALLOWED US TO REPOST THIS ARTICLE FROM THE ORIGINAL ON THE NRDC BLOG.

Livestock Rates of Use Persist Above 2017 Rates for Fourth Straight Year

A just-released FDA report, the latest in a series summarizing livestock antibiotic sales since 2009, shows that the agency’s approach to addressing the U.S livestock sector’s high-intensity use of medically important antibiotics is failing. Since 2017, at which point a veterinary directive was required to mix these antibiotics into animal feed and their use in healthy animals for the purpose of growth promotion had finally been made illegal, livestock producers have been using these precious medicines more intensively, not less.