Editorial

Fatter cows, sicker people

The FDA has restricted the use of a minor antibiotic used by the meat industry. It's a small step to counter the widespread overuse of antibiotics on healthy animals, which helps create antibiotic-resistant bacteria that harms humans.

January 13, 2012

Publication: The Los Angeles Times

When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration restricted the routine use of a class of antibiotics known as cephalosporins in livestock, it picked an easy target. The agency's move is better than nothing, but nonetheless it is a reminder of the FDA's achingly slow and timid efforts to wean agriculture off the overuse of important medications. Call it a tiptoe forward after a recent giant step in the other direction and a long era of standing in one place.

Eighty percent of the antibiotics used in this country are given to chicken, pigs, turkey and cattle, not because the animals are sick but to fatten them and prevent illness from sweeping through crowded pens. Evidence has been building for decades that the overuse of antibiotics in livestock has helped lead to the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which then present a threat to human health.

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Read the full article Fatter cows, sicker people on The Los Angeles Times Web site.