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Why did the chicken take the antibiotic?

Not because she was sick, necessarily, but because some other birds in her beak-by-giblet poultry barn were sick. Which isn't surprising, considering their less-than-sanitary living conditions.

Whenever a few birds show symptoms of respiratory infections, which they often do, it has long been common practice to just medicate the lot of them by putting an antibiotic such as Bayer's Baytril into their water.

Except that, come Sept. 12, it will be illegal to give Baytril to chickens and turkeys raised in the United States. And not a moment too soon.

Because of the new ruling by the Food and Drug Administration, it will be less likely that you will get sick and, if you do get sick, the Baytril-like drugs that are given to people in your circumstance will stand a better chance of actually working.

It took five years for the FDA to act on the recommendation of its own animal health office. McDonald's already told its suppliers to stop using the stuff. But finally the evidence that the overuse of Baytril in poultry was giving rise to a drug-resistant form of a particularly nasty bacteria was too great to ignore.

Here's the Darwinian process that the FDA hopes to end:

Sick chickens, along with hundreds or thousands of healthy ones, are given Baytril. That kills most of the germs, particularly a nasty one called Campylobacter. Except some of the stronger Campylobacters survive and, having the field to themselves, thrive and reproduce prodigiously.

Some people who eat the chicken pick up the super Campylobacter and might get sick, sometimes very sick, with symptoms including nasty stomach problems, arthritis and bloodstream infections. The normal medicine for that, Cipro, is so chemically similar to Baytril that chances are high the Campylobacter in your system, or your child's system, is immune.

So Baytril is out.

What's disheartening about this ruling is that, while the FDA has removed from legal use a drug that really is used to cure sick animals, it still allows all kinds of healthy livestock to be given some other antibiotics in small, "sub-therapeutic" doses just because it supposedly makes them grow faster.

Maybe. But it makes certain kinds of bacteria grow faster, too.

It is time to end the practice of flooding livestock with antibiotics. We don't need the meat that badly.

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http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2005/08/08/antibiotic_abuse/

Antibiotic abuse
August 8, 2005
THE GREAT, life-saving medical advance of the 20th century was the discovery of antibiotics. Now, in the 21st century, the effectiveness of these miracle drugs is being undercut by their misuse in both people and animals.

The fight to end overuse of the drugs in animals had two recent victories: a decision last month by the Food and Drug Administration to ban the use of two antibiotics in poultry and an announcement Tuesday by a major food services company, Compass Group, that its pork suppliers would no longer use antibiotics to promote growth. As welcome as these steps are, the best route to stop agricultural misuse of these drugs is legislation pending in Congress.

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, 70 percent of all antibiotics used in the United States are put in the feed of poultry and livestock. This is done not to treat infections but to speed growth or prevent disease in the unhygienic quarters of the animals. One effect of this indiscriminate use of the drugs is to breed strains of bacteria that are resistant to them, eroding their ability to cure infections in humans. The risk is greatest with germs that pass from animals to humans, such as salmonella.

In 2000, the FDA started the process of banning two antibiotics in poultry farming after a study showed that 17.6 percent of humans who were treated with these drugs in 1999 had resistant bacteria strains. In 1995, when the drugs were first approved for use in poultry, just 1 percent of humans had resistant strains. One maker of poultry antibiotics, Abbott Laboratories, quickly agreed to withdraw its drug from the market, but the Bayer Corp. chose to contest the ban. Because of the FDA's cumbersome procedures, it has taken five years to get a final ruling against Bayer.

That timeline is an argument in favor of a Senate bill, whose sponsors include Senators Olympia Snowe of Maine and Edward Kennedy, that would ban the nontherapeutic uses of antibiotics in animals. The ban would go into effect two years after enactment of the law, with provisions for financial aid to farmers. The National Academy of Sciences estimates that the ban would raise a person's annual meat bill by $5 to $10. The American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Public Health Association all favor an end to this use of antibiotics.

Resistant bacteria are also the result of doctors prescribing the drugs for conditions not caused by bacteria and of patients prematurely breaking off a course of antibiotic doses. Efforts to curb resistance have to address these as well. But banning the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics in animals is a sensible step to make sure medicine doesn't lose these potent weapons against infection.Salt Lake Tribune

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