Webinar to Address Agricultural Antibiotics
The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy’s (IATP’s) Food and Society Fellows and Healthy Food Action project have announced a September 16, 2010, webinar titled “Superbugs, Super Problems: Agricultural Antibiotics and Emerging Infections.” Three presenters who recently testified before Congress will address “[t]he new scientific consensus . . . that routine, unnecessary use of antibiotics in livestock and poultry contributes significantly to a costly epidemic of antibiotic resistance” in diseases such as Salmonella, E. coli, and MRSA. Speakers will include University of Minnesota Professor of Medicine James Johnson; Gail Hensen, a senior officer of the Pew Campaign on Human Health and Industry Farming; and Maryn McKenna, author of Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA. To register for the program, please click here.
Meanwhile, a coalition of agricultural and consumer groups has reportedly hand-delivered 180,000 letters to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in response to the agency’s call for comments on the use of agricultural antibiotics. The group includes the Center for Food Safety, which also sent a detailed organization comment; Center for Science in the Public Interest; CREDO Action; Family Farmed. org; Farm Aid; Food & Water Watch; Food Democracy Now!; The Humane Society of the United States; Organic Consumers Association; and Union of Concerned Scientists. The coalition implores FDA to “heed the overwhelming scientific evidence . . . by (1) strengthening the agency’s [Veterinary Feed Directive] guidelines and (2) making mandatory, rather than voluntary, its June guidance to ensure that antibiotics only be used under veterinary supervision to treat sick animals, thus protecting human health.” See Center for Food Safety News Release, August 27, 2010.
