The amount of antibiotics purchased to treat animals that are raised for the meat, dairy, and egg supply fell by 33 percent from 2016 to 2017, according to a report released Tuesday by the Food and Drug Administration.
FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in a statement accompanying the report that the decline suggested efforts by the agency to reduce improper use of the drugs were paying off.
“While it’s impossible to completely outrace antimicrobial resistance, we can take important steps now to slow its pace and reduce its impact on both human and animal health,” Gottlieb said.
The Trump administration has been pressing farm workers to get an order from veterinarians when they use antibiotics and to use them only when they are needed to treat or prevent disease. The tendency at agricultural facilities has been to routinely mix antibiotics into food and water as a way to help animals grow or make up for unsanitary or crowded conditions.
The report is only able to calculate sales from drug manufacturers to farms, so the FDA is not able to report how many antibiotics were actually given to the animals. It’s possible that farmers and veterinarians buy the drugs but don’t end up giving all of them to the animals.
Proponents of further reducing antibiotics in the meat, egg, and milk supply have urged Congress to beef up reporting requirements.
This kind of repeated exposure to antibiotics makes bacteria, fungi, viruses, or parasites stronger and resistant to drugs previously able to fight them off. In a farm setting, bacteria can spread not only to other livestock in close quarters, but also to farm workers who slaughter the animals and, eventually, to customers who eat infected meat.
The infections are often colloquially referred to as “superbugs,” and they can cause long hospital stays or disability in people. Each year, 2 million are sickened by these infections, and 23,000 people die from them. Gottlieb called antibiotic resistance a “serious, complex, and costly public health problem.”
He released a plan this year to tackle the issue, which was also a priority under the Obama administration. The report released Tuesday showed that since the peak in 2015, antibiotic purchases for animals has declined 41 percent.
