Maryn McKenna

Journalist and Author

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Report: FDA Documents Show Decade of Unsuccessful Attempts to Control Farm Antibiotics

January 28, 2014 By Maryn Leave a Comment

Image: gina pina/Flickr

Image: gina pina/Flickr

A nonprofit group that has been using the courts to pressure the Food and Drug Administration into exerting more control over farm antibiotic overuse has done a deep review of FDA documents prised loose through Freedom of Information Act requests — and concludes that by allowing the drugs to remain on the market as formulated, the agency isn’t meeting its own internal safety standards.

Instead of only making that assertion, the Natural Resources Defense Council took the unusual step of showing its evidence in detail. NRDC published its analysis, Playing Chicken with Antibiotics, alongside a selection of the raw documents it received from the FDA. You’ll have to be a document-obsessive to take it on: The file (cached in a Dropbox and requiring download to view) is 306 mb and 971 pages. But even without considering its content, the file’s heft makes clear how much discussion there has been at the FDA over this issue, and suggests how much evidence has been accumulating over the problem of antibiotic resistance emerging from livestock production. Also telling: The FDA has been attempting to put some controls on livestock production since 1977; these documents cover only reviews of antibiotic feed additives that were conducted between 2001 and 2010.

NRDC’s conclusion, in its report:

FDA’s scientific reviewers’ findings show that none of these products would likely be approvable as new additives for nontherapeutic livestock use if submitted today, under current FDA guidelines. Eighteen of the 30 reviewed feed additives were deemed to pose a “high risk” of exposing humans to antibiotic-resistant bacteria through the food supply, based on the information available. The remainder lacked adequate data for the reviewers to make any determination and their safety remains unproven. In addition, FDA concluded in their review that at least 26 of the reviewed feed additives do not satisfy even the safety standards set by FDA in 1973.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: animals, antibiotics, FDA, food policy, food safety, growth promoters, NRDC, Resistance, Science Blogs

2012 In The Rear-View Mirror: What You Liked

January 1, 2013 By Maryn Leave a Comment


Happy New Year, constant readers. For the second year in a row, here’s my list of which of my posts (91 in 2012!) most moved you to react. Last year (find that list here), I counted down based on which posts provoked the most comments. This year, Wired installed a tweet-counter — which registers only if someone clicks through from Twitter, but not if the post’s URL is mentioned or RT’d — so I thought it would be amusing to score posts that way this year.

And the verdict is: You care enormously about food policy, but you continue to be fascinated by the emergence of scary diseases — and, to my surprise and pleasure, you care about public understanding of science as well.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: agriculture, antibiotics, chagas, chicken, diabetes, FDA, NRDC, poultry, Resistance, Science Blogs, shrimp, TB

Court Scolds FDA Over Ag Antibiotic Use

June 5, 2012 By Maryn Leave a Comment

There’s been another development in the continuing court battle to get the US Food and Drug Administration to exert some control over agricultural use of growth-promoter antibiotics — and it arrives accompanied by some remarkably direct language from the US magistrate judge hearing the case.

In a Memorandum of Opinion and Order that was filed last Friday afternoon — which I extracted from the PACER system and stashed in my Scribd account — Judge Theodore Katz addresses the FDA’s denial of two citizens’ petitions regarding ag antibiotic use. I’ll explain the details below, but here is the key language:

… the Court finds the Agency’s denial of the Petitions to be arbitrary and capricious. For over thirty years, the Agency has been confronted with evidence of the human health risks associated with the widespread sub-therapeutic use of antibiotics in food-producing animals, and, despite a statutory mandate to ensure the safety of animal drugs, the Agency has done shockingly little to address these risks.

Whew. OK, the details:

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: animals, antibiotics, FDA, food, food policy, growth promoters, NRDC, Resistance, Science Blogs

More On Court Ordering FDA Hearings on Farm Antibiotics

March 23, 2012 By Maryn Leave a Comment

Since I posted last night on the judge’s order that the Food and Drug Administration examine the safety of farm antibiotics — via hearings that the Food and Drug Administration scheduled, but never held, back in 1977 — a lot has happened. Here’s a round-up.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, lead plaintiffs in the suit (with the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Food Animal Concerns Trust, Public Citizen and Union of Concerned Scientists) has put up a press release/explainer, accompanied by a blog post written by lead attorney Avinash Kar.  (Correction: The lead attorney is Jen Sorenson.) Key quote from Kar:

The judge’s opinion makes it clear that FDA’s voluntary approach—letting the industry police itself—does not satisfy its legal obligations. FDA must schedule hearings to let drug manufacturers make their case, and if the drug manufacturers cannot prove that the use of antibiotics in animal feed is safe, FDA must withdraw approval for those drug uses.

Kar’s comment to me: “We think this is a great step forward for public health. For 35 years, FDA has basically sat on the sidelines, mostly letting the industry police itself. In that time we have seen a massive rise in the occurrence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. This means we now will ensure that we preserve these lifesaving medicines for those who need them most.”

I asked the press office this morning at the Center for Veterinary Medicine, the FDA division named in the order, if the agency has a response yet. They said: “We are studying the opinion and considering appropriate next steps.”

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: animals, antibiotics, FDA, food, food policy, growth promoters, NRDC, Science Blogs

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