End Antibiotic Overuse in Animal Agriculture (98D-1146)From: judy@AnimalVoices [AnimalVoices@earthlink.net]
Sent: Saturday, November 23, 2002 9:40 PM
To: fdadockets@oc.fda.gov
Cc: hotissues@campbell.senate.gov; email@allard.senate.gov; tom.tancredo@mail.house.gov
Subject: End Antibiotic Overuse in Animal Agriculture (98D-1146) 

Importance: High
Dr. Mark McClellan
FDA Commissioner
fdadockets@oc.fda.gov 


  Re:   Protect Public Health:

    End Antibiotic Overuse in Animal Agriculture (98D-1146) 
    Support The Preservation of Antibiotics 
    for Human Treatment Act (S. 2508/H.R. 3804)


Dear Dr. Mark McClellan:

I strongly urge you to take tough and decisive action to end the overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture.  
Such overuse is contributing to a dangerous public health crisis, including the spread of antibiotic-resistant germs that can infect humans. 

This is a most critical time to ensure the effectiveness of our antibiotics.  Bacterial infections that fail to respond to antibiotic treatment are being reported by doctors at an increasing rate --  especially in children, seniors, and those with weakened immune systems.

A significant source of antibiotic overuse is the routine feeding of antibiotics to healthy farm animals to promote growth and compensate for stressful, unsanitary conditions on factory farms.   An estimated 70% of all antibiotics in the U.S. are fed to healthy pigs, poultry and beef cattle.  

The Food and Drug Administration has issued a draft policy to address this problem.  Unfortunately, this draft has a key flaw:  it does not commit the agency to take prompt action to end the routine feeding of medically important antibiotics to healthy farm animals. 

Although the FDA has acknowleged that it needs to review all agricultural antibiotics, including those already in use, the FDA must set a firm schedule for conducting such reviews and end overuse of antibiotics by the agricultural and pharmaceutical industries.  

To help solve the problem, in the event the FDA cannot act quickly, it should support legislation in Congress: The Preservation of Antibiotics for Human Treatment Act (S. 2508/H.R. 3804).  These bills would:


  ~~ Phase out routine feeding of eight specific classes of medically important antibiotics to healthy farm animals in two years, unless FDA shows that such feeding doesn't contribute to antibiotic resistance that could harm humans.  

  ~~ Allow these drugs to be used for treatment of animals that are actually sick.  

  ~~ Ban the use of Cipro-like drugs in treating poultry, as the FDA proposed more than two years ago.


The weakening of our antibiotics is becoming a public-health crisis.  Human health is being risked with the overuse of antibiotics in healthy farm animals.  Please act to stop it now.

Sincerely,

Judy Reed
AnimalVoices
We Speak For Animals & Their Environment
Centennial, CO 80122 

"Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's 
greed." ~~Mohandas Ghandi 

Copies:

  Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell
  Fax: 303 843-4116
  hotissues@campbell.senate.gov  

  Senator Wayne Allard  
  Fax: 303 220-8126  
  email@allard.senate.gov 

  Representative Joel Hefley
  Fax: 303 843-0726   

  Representative Tom Tancredo 
  Fax: 720 283-9776 
  tom.tancredo@mail.house.gov