Concerns about antibiotic use in agriculture have reached the ethanol industry. "Ethanol producers have long used antibiotics to control bacteria that can contaminate the fermentation process," Phillip Brasher of the Des Moines Register reports. "But now, the Food and Drug Administration is developing a policy to regulate the use of the drugs and is conducting tests in Iowa and nationwide to determine the extent to which the antibiotics are getting into livestock feed produced by the plants."
Some ethanol producers are switching or testing alternative antimicrobial products in anticipation of possible FDA regulation. "The FDA's concern is with the potential human health hazards from using antibiotics such as penicillin and viriginiamycin that many plants use to prevent bacteria from contaminating the fermentation tanks," Brasher writes. Overuse of antibiotics has been linked to the rise of drug-resistant bacteria. An FDA spokesman said testing would continue through the end of the year.
The FDA is trying to "to determine the extent and level of antibiotic residues" in distiller's grains, the lucrative byproduct of the industry and a major source of feed for beef cattle and dairy farms, Brasher reports. Jeff Lautt, Poet LLC's executive vice president for corporate operations, said in a statement that the company is "testing antimicrobial techniques that do not involve the use of antibiotics" in case the FDA further restricts the use of those drugs. (Read more)
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