FACT Meets with FDA Commissioner Makary to Address Antibiotic Overuse
FACT’s Harry Rhodes (Executive Director) and Steve Roach (Safe & Healthy Food Program Director) met with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner, Dr. Makary, on Feb. 27 to discuss what the agency can do to stop the overuse of antibiotics on factory farms. Antibiotic overuse in livestock is a major contributor to the spread of dangerous and difficult-to-treat antibiotic-resistant superbugs that make people and animals sick.
The Commissioner understood the issues and pledged to work with us to lower antibiotic use in animal agriculture in order to stop antibiotic resistance. He was also sympathetic to our work to support humane and regenerative farming. We were joined by our Keep Antibiotics Working colleague, Liam Sacino from US PIRG, and other staff from the FDA. FACT leads Keep Antibiotics Working, which is a coalition of advocacy organizations that are leading the call to stop antibiotic overuse on factory farms. FACT felt this meeting was important because of Dr. Makary’s previous work promoting the reduction of antibiotic overuse on factory farms.
We had four main asks of the FDA:
Prohibit factory farms from using medically important antibiotics in animals that have not been diagnosed with illness to reduce the number of animals that are exposed to antibiotics.
Prohibit veterinarians from writing orders for the use of medically important antibiotics for longer than 21 days since long-term use leads to the development of dangerous superbugs. Superbugs are disease-causing germs that can no longer be treated with the drugs that once stopped them.
Collect data from feed mills on the antibiotics they mix in animal feed to get a better understanding of why factory farms use so many antibiotics. Feed mills could be a good source of data because they are already required to keep records and share them with the FDA when asked.
Set targets for reductions in overall antibiotic use on factory farms.
While the meeting was a success, we need to continue to push Dr. Makary and others at the FDA to follow through with the actions we asked them to implement. They understand the issue, but often are unwilling to challenge the powerful meat and pharmaceutical lobbies. This reluctance leaves consumers, farmers, and animals vulnerable to dangerous superbug infections.
Our next steps are to reach out to our allies in Congress to ask them to put pressure on the FDA, request a meeting with the HHS Secretary - the head of the government department where the FDA is housed - and work with our partners to urge the agency to take these common-sense steps.