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Ms. SLAUGHTER. I thank my friend for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, just today, The New York Times reported that we are simultaneously facing a shortage of effective antibiotics and the growing threat of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Already antibiotic-resistant disease claims 70,000 American lives each year.
According to today's story, Dr. Janet Woodcock, the director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research at the Food and Drug Administration, has warned ``it is bad now, and the infectious disease docs are frantic, but what is worse is the thought of where we will be 5 to 10 years from now.''
They are even desperate enough to ask GlaxoKleinSmith, which is working on some new antibiotics, to allow the use of them untested--the FDA is considering this--and to try, in perhaps what will turn out to be a vain attempt, to save people who are dying from infections that we can no longer cure. GlaxoKleinSmith has said the new antibiotics they are working on they will not license for livestock feed.
Eighty percent of the antibiotics produced in the United States of America is put every day in livestock feed. The major reason for the increase in the antibiotic-resistant bacteria is the routine overuse of antibiotics in the Nation's livestock. These are not sick livestock, Mr. Speaker. This is simply put in the feed because they grow faster and they are fatter and they can get to market a little quicker. This irresponsible practice has already been scientifically linked to the growth of superbugs.
It's clear--and it has been clear for quite a while--that the Federal Government must act to end this dangerous practice. Yet, incomprehensibly, for more than 35 years the United States Food and Drug Administration has refused to follow its own advice and ban the routine use of antibiotics in agriculture, not just use it for sick animals. Instead, they have proposed voluntary guidance that naively asks industry to put public welfare before private profits--something the industry has repeatedly shown in 35 years they will not do.
As if such dereliction of duty were not enough, the FDA is now panicked about the superbug threat that they helped to create; but instead of finally removing routine antibiotic use from livestock production, the FDA is thinking of waiving important drug-testing procedures, as I said, in order to rush new drugs to market. The testing procedures that are currently in place are in place for a reason. Waiving these requirements sets a dangerous precedent and is one that is only being considered because the FDA is panicked and has refused to challenge the special interests that have helped to create this superbug threat in the first place.
As the only legislator in Congress with a background in microbiology, I can assure you we will never win the arms race against nature. As long as we allow the irresponsible use of antibiotics in our society, nature will always evolve to create stronger bacteria. As I said, with 80 percent of all of the antibiotics going to agricultural use, our answer has to start on the farm. We have to end the unnecessary use of antibiotics on healthy animals before it's too late. Indeed, it may almost be too late.
At the very least today, the ADUFA legislation should include language to collect important data on antibiotics. That provision would at least allow us to finally learn the full scope of the problem that we confront. Even more importantly, I urge my colleagues to support my legislation, H.R. 1150, the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, which would ban the routine use of eight important classes of antibiotics in livestock, but still allow a sick animal to be treated, and would help curb the growing threat of superbugs.
We are literally standing today on the brink of a public health crisis as the food industrial complex fritters away one of the most important advances in medical history--the beginning of the use of antibiotics to cure human beings. Already, some strains of tuberculosis have evolved that are incurable, and others are coming. Some experts have said that if we don't do something soon--and it may already be too late--that strep throat could become a fatal illness. That's what they're worried about, what could happen here in 5 years.
I urge my colleagues to oppose this legislation today and to please join me in the fight to protect the antibiotics for human health. It is so important. I cannot vote for this bill, although I recognize that some work has gone into it. I have spent years on this, and the years are running out, and the time is short.
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