Reply #8: 70% of antibiotics in US are given to livestock, not humans! [View All]

[arissa]

http://www.mindfully.org/Health/Antibiotics-Healthy-Livestock.htm

Excessive use of antibiotics by meat producers, 8 times more than in human medicine, contributes to alarming increase in antibiotic resistance

WASHINGTON - Every year in the United States 25 million pounds of valuable antibiotics -- roughly 70 percent of total US antibiotic production -- are fed to chickens, pigs, and cows for nontherapeutic purposes like growth promotion, according to a new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists. This finding -- 40 percent greater than the estimate of the livestock industry for all animal uses -- is the first transparent estimate of the quantities of antibiotics used in meat production.

The report is also the first to show that the quantities of antibiotics used in animal agriculture dwarf those used in human medicine. Nontherapeutic livestock use in chickens, pigs, and cows accounts for 8 times more antibiotics than human medicine, which is using only 3 million pounds per year.

"The meat industry's share of the antibiotic-resistance problem has been ignored for too long," said Dr. Margaret Mellon, Director of the Food and Environment Program at UCS and co-author of the new report. "Antibiotics are a precious resource and should be used in animals only when necessary."

Until now, health officials and citizens had to rely on incomplete industry estimates to design effective responses to the antibiotic-resistance problem. According to the new UCS report, "Hogging It: Estimates of Antimicrobial Abuse in Livestock," the total use of antibiotics in healthy livestock has climbed from 16 million pounds in the mid-1980s to 25 million pounds today. Of that, approximately 10 million pounds are used in hogs, 11 million pounds in poultry, and 4 million pounds in cattle.

It's NOT over-prescription!