Children's Health Defense By Natasha Gilbert
Antimicrobials are widely used to treat or prevent disease in farm animals across the U.S. More of these medically important drugs are sold for use in livestock than for humans each year.
Using antimicrobials gives illness-causing bacteria a chance to develop ways to evade them — a problem that killed 1.14 million people globally in a single year, topping deaths from HIV and malaria combined.
What’s more, mortality is expected to grow by nearly 70% over the next 25 years, reaching a similar scale to the COVID-19 pandemic.
To tackle the crisis, nearly eight years ago the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) effectively banned farmers from using medically important antimicrobials to boost growth in livestock — a practice regarded by many researchers, veterinarians and advocates as excessive and unnecessary.
Antimicrobials are a group of drugs that kill microorganisms including bacteria, viruses and fungi.
The FDA contends that the widely welcomed ban, along with some other reforms, have led to “significant and sustained” changes in the use of antimicrobials on farms.
But advocates for cutting the use of antimicrobials warn that the FDA’s assertions are “disingenuous.”
New data shows sales are falling, says FDA
Using fewer antimicrobials is crucial to help preserve important medicines for the good health of people and animals, say scientists.
“Every time we use an antimicrobial, microorganisms are going to adapt and resistance can develop,” says Javier Yugueros-Marcos, head of antimicrobial resistance at the World Organization for Animal Health, the global authority on animal health based in Paris, France.
At a meeting at the United Nations in September, global leaders acknowledged that antimicrobial resistance is one of the most urgent global health threats and promised to “meaningfully reduce” the amount of antimicrobials used in animal agriculture globally over the next six years to help tackle the crisis.
However, they failed to set clear targets to lower use following pushback from the U.S. and other meat-producing nations.
The FDA says its efforts are gaining ground. On Oct. 10, the agency published new data that it says suggests a healthy overall downward trend in the volume of antimicrobials sold for use in livestock.
Annual sales of antimicrobials are often taken as a rough indication of the amount used in farm animals, although not all drugs sold will be consumed. (The FDA doesn’t yet routinely collect data on how much antimicrobial farmers actually use.)
In a summary analysis of the new data, the FDA highlights that sales fell by 2% from 2022 to 2023 and by 37% since 2015. Most of these gains come from a big drop in sales as farmers geared up to meet the ban on using antimicrobials to boost growth.
In a statement to U.S. Right to Know, an FDA official wrote that the agency believes “the overall trend in volume of sales indicate a significant and sustained change in how antimicrobials are sold and distributed in food-producing animals.”
But veterinarians and advocates for cutting antimicrobial use in farm animals warn that sales are actually growing for some livestock species.
After an initial drop, sales began creeping back up
Steven Roach, who works on safe and healthy food at the Food Animal Concerns Trust (FACT), a campaign group, says that after an initial welcome drop, sales began to rebound after the ban came into force.
“We can all agree that what the FDA did had an impact,” he says.
But the impact is limited and the drop in sales wasn’t big enough, he adds.
Roach calculated a small drop in sales between 2022 and last year but a 6.9% rise from 2017. His calculations take account of changes in the size and weight of livestock populations, clarifying that shifts in sales are not due to fluctuations in animal numbers.
The initial drop in U.S. sales is largely due to big cuts made in chicken and turkey farming with the former sector slashing sales in half since 2017 and dropping a further 4.6% between 2022 and last year, says Roach.
Less progress is seen in pigs and cattle. Roach calculated a small drop in sales for pigs between 2022 and 2023, but a 24% rise since 2017. Sales for cattle rose by 1.5% between 2022 and 2023 and jumped by 10% since 2017, he says.
Gail Hansen, a public health veterinarian and former state epidemiologist and public health veterinarian for the Kansas Department for Health and Environment, agrees.
“Things are creeping back up,” she says.
Randall Singer, a veterinarian and epidemiologist who researches antimicrobial resistance in poultry at the University of Minnesota, says that the poultry industry — with which he works closely — has reduced its use of antimicrobials “almost to the bare minimum.”
But notes that the use of antimicrobials will fluctuate as diseases ebb and flow.
Farmers of other livestock species should reassess their use of antimicrobials, he says. But they must take care when changing their practices.
“You keep tweaking the system until you know that you can safely pull that antibiotic practice out of your system and not have the consequence of severe animal health and welfare issues,” he says…
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