From: JASONROBYN@aol.com
Sent: Tuesday, January 09, 2001 5:24 PM
To: EXECSEC
Subject: foodstock animal antibiotic use
Dear Commissioner Jane Henney: 

I urge her to establish a reporting system to determine the quantity of 
antibiotics 
used in U.S. agriculture. 

The FDA should create a federal antibiotic reporting system for foodstock 
animals: this must be a a to priority. 

The rise in antibiotic resistance is slowly eliminating the effectiveness of 
these drugs for treating infectious diseases in people.  While the misuse of 
antibiotics in 
human medicine is the larger contributor to the problem, there is agreement 
among public health experts that the overuse of antibiotics in agriculture is 
also impacting 
human health by contributing to the rise in drug-resistant microorganisms. 

In the just released report Hogging It!, the Union of Concerned Scientists 
attempts to address this lack of data by estimating antibiotic use in U.S. 
agriculture.  UCS 
calculated antibiotic use in the three major livestock sectors using publicly 
available information on herd size, approved drug lists and dosages, and 
estimates on the 
percent of herds treated.  Their report estimates that a staggering 24.6 
million pounds - roughly 70 percent of all antibiotic drugs - are fed to 
healthy cows, pigs, and chickens annually for nontherapeutic purposes such as 
growth promotion.   By UCS  calculations, the amount and total share of 
antibiotics used in livestock dwarf the 17.8 million pounds recently reported 
by industry for all agricultural use of antibiotics. 

While UCS's indirect numbers are the best, most transparent estimate of 
agricultural antibiotic use available.  While they are good, they are not 
good enough.  Government-guaranteed information on U.S. antibiotic use is 
necessary for creating effective solutions for reducing antibiotic use.  The 
Food and Drug Administration has recognized the need for collecting such 
information, but it has not taken steps to establish the needed system. 

The FDA should move now to establish a system for collecting basic data on 
agricultural antibiotic use in the United States.  The information should be 
collected for both human and agricultural use and should include the class, 
indication, dosage, and treatment period. 

Thank you for your action on this important matter. 

Jason Jungreis 
527 47th Avenue 
San Francisco, CA  94121 
415-750-0830