Congresswoman Louise Slaughter of New York has sent a stern letter to Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret Hamburg criticizing the FDA – saying it has done nothing about the antibiotic resistance issue in humans. On Slaughter’s to-do list for the FDA is to have the agency “withdraw approval of non-therapeutic uses of medically important antimicrobials in food animals.” Slaughter, a microbiologist, continues to insist that such use of antibiotics is a leading cause of human antibiotic resistance and insists that science backs that up. Many animal scientists, however, say such evidence is lacking.
Slaughter criticizes the FDA for rejecting two citizen petitions, in 1999 and 2005, asking for the withdrawal. She says the FDA’s “excuses” for not acting are that the withdrawal procedure is “slow, cumbersome and too costly.” Slaughter says with the public’s health at stake, those excuses are inexcusable.
Slaughter is the ranking member of the House Rules Committee and is the author of the bill titled “Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act”, or “PAMTA” calling for an end to the sub-therapeutic use of several categories of antibiotics in food production animals.
Slaughter says the EU and China are already taking steps to limit animal antibiotic use and the U.S. has a public mandate to do the same.
Source: Brownfield November 29, 2011 By Julie Harker –