Washington, DC (PRWEB) June 04, 2013
Well being Care Without having Harm (HCWH), Healthful Meals Action, and the Pew Charitable Trusts delivered a letter with signatures from 795 well being professionals to President Barack Obama today, urging him to stress the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to act on stalled policies to reduce the overuse and misuse of antibiotics in meals animal production.

“Current patterns of antibiotic use in agriculture not only improve the danger of antibiotic-resistant infections in men and women but also assistance an agricultural system that harms public and environmental well being,” says Ted Schettler, MD, Science Director for the Science and Environmental Overall health Network and Science Advisor for HCWH.

Close to 30 million pounds of the antibiotics sold in the United States are utilized in animal agriculture. Most of these are used for non-therapeutic purposes like advertising growth and compensating for overcrowded and unsanitary living situations. Many of these antibiotics are also medically crucial, and utilised to treat illnesses in humans.

There is overwhelming scientific consensus that overuse of antibiotics in livestock is a health hazard to men and women, says Thomas Newman, MD, a member of the faculty at the School of Medicine at University of California at San Francisco Healthcare Center. Far more than 300 leading health-related organizations, including the American Health-related Association, the American Public Overall health Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics have advocated ending the non-therapeutic use of antibiotics as feed additives.

“The antibiotic resistance crisis is expanding worse every single day. Physicians are seeing a lot more and more sufferers with antibiotic resistant infections in hospitals, and we are cleaning up our personal act by curbing our personal overuse of antibiotics in clinical practice, states Robert Gould, MD, President of San Francisco Bay Location Physicians for Social Duty. But this is not sufficient. We now recognize that feeding healthy animals antibiotics contributes enormously to this difficulty. As well being professionals fundamentally concerned with the wellness of our individuals, we urge President Obama to demonstrate his leadership on this issue by joining our demand that the livestock business and the FDA promptly right this significant threat to public well being.

The letter asks the President to pressure the FDA to move forward with mandatory withdrawals of unsafe uses of antibiotics, and to publicly report better data on livestock antibiotic sales to inform the public health neighborhood about emerging disease threats. The letter can be located on the internet.