138—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, April 1,1978
Antibiotics treated unfairly, critics charge
AMES, lowa - Spokesmen
for the American Farm
Bureau Federation and
Cyanamid’s Agricultural
Division went on record here
last week to defend the use of
antibiotics in animal feeds.
Cyanamid’s spokesman. Dr.
L. M. Skamser, product
group manager for the
Animal Industry Depart
ment, says that the Food and
Drug Administration’s
(FDA) proposals for new
livestock feed regulations
will cost America’s smallest
family farmers a total of
$12.6 million per year.
Farm Bureau charged
that Congress is allowing
and encouraging the Food
and Drug Administration to
transform what should be
scientific discussion on sub
therapeutic use of antibiotics
in annual feeds into a
political and emotional issue
with little regard to com
plete scientific facts.
Marion Stackhouse,
president of the Indiana
Farm Bureau Federation
and an American Farm
Bureau Federation director,
made the charges at a
hearing on the FDA's rule
making to ban or severely
restrict the use of penicillin
and tetracyclines in animal
feeds.
Pointing out that the use of
subtherapeutic levels of
antibacterial drugs in
animal feeds has been a
common practice for more
than 25 years, Stackhouse
estimated the drugs are used
in the food for all turkeys, 30-
per cent of the chickens, 80-
per cent of the swine and
veal calves and 60-per cent
of the cattle raised for food
in the United States.
The Farm Bureau
spokesman warned that
undue curtailment of the
safe and appropriate use of
the drugs would raise the
cost of food to the consumer
and lower food quality.
“In any evaluation of
chemicals and drugs,”
Stackhouse said, “the
possible detrimental effect
must be considered in
relation to the benefits
derived through the filing of
an economic impact
statement including
publication of the risk
benefit ratio.”
Livestock producers have
repeatedly stressed that
there is no direct evidence
that feeding antibiotics to
food animals has ever
resulted in the transfer of
antibiotic resistance from
animal to man.
Calling for additional
scientific studies before
enforcing the ban on the
antibiotics, Stackhouse said
the FDA should cease
making public comments cn
the alleged risks.
“These comments tend to
create an unfair image of
wholesome and nutritious
products which, scientific
evidence to this date in
dicates, is unwarranted,”
Stackhouse concluded.
Cyanamid’s Dr. L. M.
Skamser, in testimony
prepared for an informal
hearing on the proposals
called by FDA, said the
agency itself estimates that
the cost of its proposals will
fall most heavily on 210,000
American farmers who do
not routinely use veterinary
service. Skamser, himself a
veterinarian, said, “These
are America’s smallest
family farmers.”
Citing an FDA Economic
Impact Analysis of the
proposals, the witness
agreed that larger livestock
producers either have
veterinarians on their own
payrolls, contract for ser
vice on a retainer basis, or
routinely use veterinary
service for livestock disease
problems. The increase in
costs will be noticed
primarily by the estimated
210,000 farmers who do not
have such arrangements.
FDA has proposed to
establish an additional
regulatory category for
medicated feeds, to require
approval of Medicated Feed
applications before a feed
mill can mix penicillin or
tetracycline antibiotics in
livestock or poultry feeds,
and also to require a written
prescription of a
veterinarian before the mill
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can mix tetracycline or
penicillin into a feed.
In other regulatory action,
FDA is moving to ban all use
of penicillin and most uses of
tetracycline in feed. At
present, those uses are
permitted, under claims
' currently accepted by FDA,
i to prevent or control disease,
or reduce feed consumption
per unit of production, or
improve the rate of growth
of animals receiving them.
FDA has said the various
proposals are necessary
because of the possibility
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that such uses could present
a hazard to human health.
In his testimony, Dr.
Skamser stated there is no
evidence that the uses
questioned actually present
any hazard. Thus, he said,
FDA’s proposed new
regulations will result in:
- a flood of medicated feed
applications that will create
a. serious burden to industry
and probably tax the Bureau
of Veterinary Medicine
(BVM) beyond their
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capacity to process in a
reasonable amount of time;
- prescriptions in the
millions that feed,mill in
spectors will not be able to
monitor;
- an added burden for the
overworked large animal
veterinarian and an im
possible situation for the
poultry industry.
- The witness charged that
agriculture would face “all
this red tape with no in
crease in safety!”