990337 FDA Guidelines For Antibiotic Use In Livestock

Washington - Faced with mounting evidence that the routine use of antibiotics in livestock may diminish the drugs' power to cure infections in people, the Food and Drug Administration has begun a major revision of its guidelines for approving new antibiotics for animals and for monitoring the effects of old ones.

The goal of the revision is to minimize the emergence of bacterial strains that are resistant to antibiotics. Drug-resistant infections, some fatal, have been increasing in people in the U.S., and many scientists attribute the problem to the misuse of antibiotics in both humans and animals.

A crucial component of the new guidelines will be the requirement that manufacturers test certain new livestock drugs for a tendency to foster the growth of resistant bacteria that could prove harmful to people. The types of antibiotics that would get special scrutiny are those that are also used by humans or are related to drugs used by humans. If the antibiotics are shown to foster bacterial resistance, they could be banned from use as growth promoters in animals.

The proposed guidelines have drawn criticism from both sides of a bitter ongoing debate. At issue is the extensive use of antibiotics in livestock: Of the 50 million pounds of antibiotics produced every year in the U.S., about 40 percent is given to animals, mostly as feed additives to promote growth. On one side, the drug and agriculture industries say the FDA is going too far toward restricting access to antibiotics, which they insist are essential to produce safe and affordable meat and poultry. But public-health and consumer advocates say the FDA is not going far enough.

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