Union of Concerned Scientists

UCS's Food and Environment Program's newest project focuses on reducing the use of antibiotics in food animals. Working in concert with environmental, public health, and other organizations, we are aiming to put the issue of the misuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture in the national spotlight.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are on the rise. Patients once effectively treated for pneumonia, tuberculosis, or ear infections may now have to try three or more antibiotics before they find one that works. And as more bacterial strains develop resistance, more people will die because effective antibiotics are not identified quickly enough or because the bacteria causing the disease are resistant to all available antibiotics.

Why have bacterial strains become resistant? The short answer is overuse of antibiotics. Physicians and hospitals have overprescribed the drugs, and patients have demanded them -- even for illnesses not caused by bacteria.

Veterinarians, too, overprescribe drugs to treat sick animals, and even more, livestock producers use massive amounts to promote animal growth and make their business more efficient and profitable. On top of that, growers spray antibiotics on crops to control bacteria that damage vegetables and kill trees.

While medicine must act to slow the emergence of resistant bacteria, it is equally important to eliminate uses -- primarily agricultural -- whose benefits are economic, not therapeutic. About 25 million pounds of antibiotics are fed every year to livestock for growth promotion and disease prevention, almost eight times the amount given to humans to treat disease. Both the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization have called for an end to the use of antibiotics as growth promoters in agriculture that we depend on in human medicine.

One of our top priorities is to convince the Food and Drug Administration to severely curtail the numbers and kinds of antibiotics available for use in livestock production -- starting with those drugs important in human medicine. Our first goal is to urge the FDA to ban or severely limit the use of antibiotics for nontherapeutic purposes such as growth promotion or disease prevention. Such action would have the added benefit of pushing livestock management in the direction of more sustainable practices.

• Enhance the immune system
• Increase energy
• Have an internal cleansing action
• Act as an anti-viral, anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, and anti-parasitic
• Lower blood pressure, fats, and reduce blood sugar