{"id":184850,"date":"2012-01-04T21:09:00","date_gmt":"2012-01-05T02:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/01\/04\/well-what-do-you-know-the-fda-supports-antibiotic-resistant-microbes\/"},"modified":"2012-01-04T21:09:00","modified_gmt":"2012-01-05T02:09:00","slug":"well-what-do-you-know-the-fda-supports-antibiotic-resistant-microbes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/01\/04\/well-what-do-you-know-the-fda-supports-antibiotic-resistant-microbes\/","title":{"rendered":"Well, What Do You Know, the FDA Supports Antibiotic Resistant Microbes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>They have <a href=\"http:\/\/civileats.com\/2012\/01\/03\/fda-gives-up-on-antibiotic-restrictions-in-livestock\/\">given up on attempting to regulate the massive overuse of antibiotics in livestock<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: blue;\"><p>The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) pulled a Scrooge move just before Christmas. The agency published&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.gpo.gov\/fdsys\/pkg\/FR-2011-12-22\/html\/2011-32775.htm\">an entry in the Federal Register<\/a>&nbsp;declaring  that it will end its attempt at mandatory restrictions on the use of  antibiotics in animal agriculture. The agency isn\u2019t advertising the  shift, though: This news would have remained a secret if not for Maryn  McKenna\u2019s&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/wiredscience\/2011\/12\/fda-ag-antibiotics\/\">Superbug blog<\/a>&nbsp;over  at Wired. McKenna, who specializes in writing about antibiotics and  their link to pathogens, caught the Federal Register notice.<\/p>\n<p>This is a sorry end to a process that began in 1977 (!), but McKenna created an&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/wiredscience\/2011\/12\/fda-ag-antibiotics\/\">excellent timeline<\/a>&nbsp;that  traces the history of the issue back to the 1950s. In 2009, the Obama  administration breathed new life into a moribund process because the top  two Obama appointees at the FDA, Commissioner Margaret Hamburg and her  then-deputy Joshua Sharfstein,&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.fda.gov\/NewsEvents\/Testimony\/ucm171715.htm\">strongly supported<\/a>&nbsp;restricting antibiotic use in agriculture.<\/p>\n<p>But despite Hamburg and Sharfstein\u2019s many supportive statements, the FDA has only produced&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.grist.org\/article\/food-FDA-takes-steps-to-limit-use-of-antibiotics-in-livest\">a draft set of \u201cvoluntary\u201d guidelines<\/a>. And, with this latest announcement, it looks like that\u2019s as far as they\u2019re willing to go.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The depressing thing, in addition to the fact that this practice creates &#8220;superbugs&#8221; that kill people, is that we know how much this would cost the consumer, <a href=\"http:\/\/news.vin.com\/VINNews.aspx?articleId=18684\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">based on the Danish experience<\/a>, and it&#8217;s less than 10\u00a2 a pound.<\/p>\n<p>By way of putting this into perspective, antibiotics used at sub-therapeutic levels in feed accounts for 80% of all antibiotic use in the US.<\/p>\n<p>Our feedlots are a petri dish for MRSA, antibiotic resistant E. Coli, etc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>They have given up on attempting to regulate the massive overuse of antibiotics in livestock: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) pulled a Scrooge move just before Christmas. The agency published&nbsp;an entry in the Federal Register&nbsp;declaring that it will end its attempt at mandatory restrictions on the use of antibiotics in animal agriculture. The agency &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1029,1012,1074,985],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agriculture","category-food","category-medical","category-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184850"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184850\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}