Senate Bill Would Ban Routine
Use of Some Antibiotics on Livestock

First hormones, now antibiotics.

There's been a lot of talk in recent weeks about the use of artificial growth hormones in the dairy industry, since the announcement that Monsanto Corp. is suing Oakhurst Dairy over the way it markets its hormone-free milk. Now, another debate over food production is about to come front and center, possibly as early as next week.

U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine will join Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, in introducing a bill to ban the use of eight antibiotics commonly used in agriculture to promote the growth of poultry and livestock. Snowe is the first Republican to endorse the measure, which is a revised version of a bill that failed last year.

The National Academy of Sciences estimates that 70 percent of the antibiotics used in the United States are fed routinely to farm animals for reasons other than treating disease. Penicillin, tetracycline and bacitracin - all drugs used to fight illnesses in humans - are among the antibiotics given to pigs, cows and chickens to make them grow faster and prevent disease.

But the antibiotics can lose effectiveness against germs that live in farm animals' guts. Those bacteria, organisms such as campylobacter and salmonella, are the same ones that cause food poisoning in people.

There is growing concern among scientists, physicians and public health officials that the widespread use of antibiotics in agriculture is contributing to the development of "super bugs" that are resistant to any kind of treatment. Supporters of that theory say they want to prevent a medical backslide to the days when common infections were frightening and life-threatening.

"I think that we all have taken for granted that major infections aren't an expected part of our everyday experience, and that if one is unlucky enough to pick one up that there's going to be treatment for it," said Dr. Syd Sewall, a pediatrician in Hallowell who is former president of the Maine chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Sewall's group, the Maine Medical Association, the Maine Public Health Association, many other local organizations and state public health officials have been urging the state's congressional delegation to take action on the antibiotics issue.

The American Medical Association has come out in support of use restrictions. A study released in March by the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine called for an end to nontherapeutic use of the drugs, as did a 2002 study in the medical journal "Clinical Infectious Diseases."

Some businesses, including some poultry producers, have voluntarily taken steps to reduce their antibiotic use. Last month, McDonald's announced that it has asked its meat suppliers to phase out the use of growth-promoting antibiotics by the end of 2004. It is the first fast-food chain to do so, but it probably won't be the last.

Rebecca Goldburg, a senior scientist at Environmental Defense, said her organization will work with McDonald's to try to persuade other companies to adopt similar policies.

"Consumers, frankly, don't want food that's produced with large quantities of artificial hormones or pesticides or antibiotics and so on," Goldburg said, "and companies that can say they're doing without have an advantage in the marketplace."

Goldburg will be in Portland today to participate in a public forum on the issue at the Wild Oats store on Marginal Way. The forum is sponsored by Wild Oats and the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Snowe did not support Kennedy's antibiotics bill last year because it would have banned the therapeutic use of antibiotics in livestock as well as their use as growth promoters. Negotiations have been going on since October to develop an acceptable version, said Elizabeth Wenk, Snowe's spokeswoman.

"We want to ensure that it's based on sound science," Wenk said.

Kennedy's and Snowe's bill would phase out the routine, nontherapeutic use of antibiotics in agriculture over two years.

"Unfortunately, decades after the discovery of penicillin and other antibiotics, diseases of bacterial origin remain a real and increasing threat to public health," Snowe said in a written statement. "Overuse of medically important antibiotics in humans and animals promotes resistance in bacteria. Infections caused by resistant bacteria cannot be treated with traditional antibiotics. If left unchecked, the problem of bacterial resistance represents an impending public health crisis."

Producers think the bill is "a bad idea," said Barbara Determan, a pork producer in Iowa who has been active in the antibiotics debate.

"It would be a financial hardship because many of the operations have situations where putting in low-level antibiotics keeps the animals healthy and they gain faster," she said. "That's important to us, of course, but more importantly we want to make sure we have a safe product. If an animal becomes sick, then you have to treat it and sometimes end up using more antibiotic."

Determan said pork producers have been searching for about four years for alternatives to reduce the use of growth-promoting drugs.

No matter what restrictions are ultimately put in place, the growth of antibiotic-resistant germs may be inevitable, Sewall said.

"I think what we're going to end up doing is just slowing the process by restricting the use in agriculture," Sewall said. "What we want to do is make it so the age of antibiotics is prolonged as long as possible until we have some other kind of breakthrough in how we deal with infectious illnesses, which hopefully medicine and science will give us before it's too late."

© 2003 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

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