Around 80 percent of all antibiotics used in the U.S. are given to livestock, Grow and Huffstutter write. "About 390 medications containing antibiotics have been approved to treat illness, stave off disease and promote growth in farm animals. But the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has reviewed just 7 percent of those drugs for their likelihood of creating antibiotic-resistant superbugs, a Reuters data analysis found."
The poultry industry said the antibiotics pose little threat to humans, Grow and Huffstutter write. Tom Super, spokesman for the National Chicken Council, told Reuters, "Several scientific, peer reviewed risk assessments demonstrate that resistance emerging in animals and transferring to humans does not happen in measurable amounts, if at all." He said using antibiotics to prevent diseases in flocks “is good, prudent veterinary medicine. . . . Prevention of the disease prevents unnecessary suffering and prevents the overuse of potentially medically important antibiotics in treatment of sick birds.”
Health authorities disagree. The "World Health Organization called antibiotic resistance 'a problem so serious it threatens the achievements of modern medicine,'" Reuters writes. The annual cost to battle antibiotic-resistant infections is estimated at $21 billion to $34 billion in the U.S., WHO said. Each year, about 430,000 people in the U.S. become ill from food-borne bacteria that resist conventional antibiotics, according to a July report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Overall, the CDC estimates that 2 million people are sickened in the U.S. annually with infections resistant to antibiotics and at least 23,000 people die. (Read more)
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