The reauthorization of the Animal Drug User Fee Act, which is quickly making its way through Congress, gives lawmakers a chance to address the growing threat of superbugs caused, in part, by open-ended use of antibiotics important to human medicine. They can use ADUFA as a vehicle to put duration limits on all medically important antibiotics used in food animals.
The majority of medically important antibiotics are sold for use on farm animals, rather than on people. And farmers often don’t give the antibiotics to treat sick animals; instead, they use the drugs prophylactically to prevent disease that can occur in unsanitary and overcrowded conditions.
When a doctor writes a prescription for antibiotics, it includes a set number of pills to take over a limited amount of time. That’s not usually the case when meat producers give antibiotics to their animals. Some antibiotics approved for use in food production have no defined durations of use or can be used for extended time periods. Such prolonged use gives resistant bacteria a chance to thrive as other bacteria die off over time.
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