FDA pushes antibiotics reduction in food-producing animals

FDA Issues Draft Guidance on the Judicious Use of Medically
Important Antimicrobials in Food-Producing Animals

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today issued draft guidance
intended to help reduce the development of resistance to medically
important antimicrobial drugs used in food-producing animals.

Today’s draft guidance outlines the FDA’s current thinking on
strategies to assure that antimicrobial drugs that are important for
therapeutic use in humans are used judiciously in animal agriculture.
The FDA acknowledges the efforts to date by various veterinary and
animal producer organizations to institute guidelines for the judicious
use of antimicrobial drugs, but the agency believes additional steps are
needed.

The draft guidance summarizes a number of published reports on
antimicrobial resistance and states that the overall weight of evidence
available to date supports the conclusion that using medically important
antimicrobial drugs for production or growth enhancing purposes (i.e.,
non-therapeutic or subtherapeutic uses) in food-producing animals is not
in the interest of protecting and promoting the public health.

Read the rest of the release and see a link to the draft guidance here.