Slaughter Praises American Cities for Passing Resolutions to Stop Overuse of Antibiotics in Livestock

Press Release

Today, Congresswoman Louise M. Slaughter (D-NY), the only microbiologist in Congress and a leader on public health issues, praised the cities of Seattle, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Providence, and Red Bank, NJ for passing resolutions to stop the daily use of antibiotics in animal feed -- an urgent public health problem that is causing the development of more resistant bacteria, destroying the effectiveness of antibiotics and making our food less safe. The resolutions called on Congress to enact the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (PAMTA), legislation authored by Rep. Slaughter that would preserve eight critical classes of antibiotics for use on humans and sick animals only.

"I stand shoulder to shoulder with these American cities that are saying enough is enough -- stop wasting these critical antibiotics on healthy animals that don't need them and start saving them for humans," Rep. Slaughter said."Americans don't want to eat meat from animals that have been loaded up with antibiotics to compensate for the conditions on the factory farm -- they want safe meat from healthy animals, and they want antibiotics to be preserved for future generations. We will take our effort from city to city until Congress and the Food and Drug Administration start listening to the American people."

Factory farms routinely give antibiotics to food animals to promote growth and to compensate for raising their livestock in crowded and unsanitary conditions. Bacteria that are subjected to antibiotics can become resistant to those antibiotics, and when these bacteria infect humans, those antibiotics are ineffective in treating the infection. Antibiotic-resistant infections kill 23,000 people every year in the United States -- more than HIV/AIDS. Currently, 80 percent of the antibiotics sold in the United States are used on livestock. Efforts to reform the practice have been met with stiff resistance by industry. Out of 225 lobbying reports filed on PAMTA in the 112th Congress, 87.5 percent of those reports were filed by groups hostile to regulation.

In December 2013, following decades of inaction, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released a voluntary guidance that urges drug companies and agriculture corporations to apply a standard of "judicious use" when distributing antibiotics to food animals, but provides no enforcement mechanism or metric to measure success. In fact, Juan Ramon Alaix, CEO of Zoetis, the world's largest animal pharmaceutical company, revealed that the FDA's approach would not curb the problem of overuse, saying the guidance, "will not have a significant impact on our revenues."

These cities join over 450 medical and consumer advocacy organizations that have pledged their support for PAMTA.

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