Advocacy Groups Seek Global Ban on Animal Drugs

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, Consumers Union and Food Animal Concerns Trust have sent a letter urging U.S. delegates to an upcoming U.N. food standards agency meeting about residues of veterinary drugs in food to ask other countries to stop using drugs that have long been prohibited for use in the United States due to “human health concerns, particularly carcinogenicity and mutagenicity.” The drugs in question include carbadox, nitrofural, furazolidone, chlorpromazine (thorazine), stilbenes (e.g. diethylstilbestrol, DES), olaquindox, dimetridazole, ipronidazole, metronidazole, and ronidazole, and according to Food Animal Concerns Trust Director Steven Roach, they are “not needed for animal health” and most countries have adopted safer alternatives. “We urge the U.S. delegation to insist on a recommendation that other countries prohibit use of these drugs, as the U.S. itself does,” said Roach. See Consumerist, August 21, 2013.