http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2014/10/antibiotic-sales-to-farms-up-16-percent/
I came across this article and found it really interesting that sales of antibiotics to farms have increased 16% between 2009 and 2012. We have discussed the issue of antibiotics on farms quite often but I liked this article because of how recent it is. Ninety-seven percent of these drugs were sold over-the-counter, and feed was the most common means of administration for them. Public health officials expressed their concern that overuse of antibiotics on farms will lead to an increase in antibiotic-resistant pathogens that affect humans.
“The vast majority of antibiotics used in animal agriculture are important in human medicine, and most of them are being fed to animals that aren’t sick.”
One instance I found very interesting because of its irony was “In January 2012, FDA banned the extralabel use of cephalosporins in food animals to preserve their effectiveness for treating sick people, yet the sales of those drugs still rose that year.” This data were are presented with is very limited, administrators are curious about use by species and the actual purposes of administration, and the FDA has acknowledged it and said they hope to find a way to collect that data.
It’s scary to think how many drugs are not FDA approved, never mind are FDA approved and still have serious hazardous health effects! This was an interesting article, thank you for sharing.