From: Marilyn Voorhies [lynny@downeast.net]
Sent: Tuesday, January 09, 2001 4:01 PM
To: EXECSEC
Subject: Antibiotics in agriculture

Dear Doctor Henney:

The overuse of antibiotics in agriculture is contributing to the alarming 
emergence of un treatable diseases in people. Reliable data on antibiotic 
use in agriculture, needed for an effective national strategy to reduce 
antibiotic use, are unavailable.  Therefore, we respectfully urge you to 
establish a reporting system to determine the quantity of antibiotics used 
in U.S. agriculture.  This should be a top priority item!

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 having an adverse impact on 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 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 non therapeutic
purposes such as growth promotion. This clearly indicates that 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.

Although they were devised by an indirect method, UCS's 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.

We feel a compelling need for the FDA to 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.

May we please hear from you on this vital issue?

Sincerely,

Bill & Marilyn Voorhies
Clark Point Rd.
West Tremont, ME 04690-9702