New FDA controls don’t go far enough to prevent antibiotic resistance, GAO says

A federal report released by the Government Accountability Office last week says that the FDA’s new controls on the agricultural use of antibiotics fall short of expectations, especially as far as the prevention of antibiotic resistance is concerned. The new controls, which were finally implemented in January three years after they were first announced, were intended to make it impossible for livestock producers to use routine, subtherapeutic levels of antibiotics as growth promoters, a technique that has been used since the 1940s to get animals up to slaughtering weight in shorter time frames. The new controls were made up of two documents that would “protect public health” and “help phase out the use of medically important antimicrobials in food animals for productive purposes,” according to the FDA. Read more