Commentary: A growing health threat, ignored

By John Carlin | Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services

For two years my colleagues at the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production and I poured over volumes of data on what the Food and Drug Administration calls on its Web site "a growing threat," and what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has termed "among its top concerns" – the phenomenon of antibiotic resistant bacteria.

What we found in our research was that overuse of antibiotics, especially in the production of food animals, is one of the primary culprits. We released our findings in April of this year with the recommendation that the FDA phase out the non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in farm animal production, meaning quite simply, preserve these drugs to treat sick animals, not healthy ones, and don't use them simply to stimulate weight gain.