After decades of ignoring a deadly problem,the Food and Drug Administration finally came out with rules restricting the meat industry's heavy reliance on antibiotics back in 2012. But the modern regime had two major flaws: (1) It was voluntary, relying on the benevolence of two industries (pharmaceuticals and meat) with long records of lobbying tough for their own interests, and (2) it contained a loophole that allowed meat producers to preserve their old antibiotic habit whether they so desired.
Enter California,with modern legislation—expected to be signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown any day now—that would retract those regulatory gifts from the state's teeming livestock farms. The bill would make California's regulation of animal antibiotic use more stringent than the federal government's simply because it's compulsory and not voluntary, according to Natural Resources Defense Council senior attorney Avinash Kar. But it also snaps shut the notorious "prevention" loophole in the FDA's policy, and he adds.
Antibiotics are used in three ways on factory livestock farms: (1) growth promotion—when animals get small daily doses of the the stuff,they grow faster; (2) disease prevention—animals stuffed together in stressful conditions are prone to infection, they pass diseases among themselves rapidly, or antibiotics provide a kind of pharmaceutical substitute for a natural robust immune system; and (3) disease treatment—an animal comes down with a bug and gets treated with antibiotics.
The FDA's policy phases out growth promotion but leaves prevention intact—even though giving animals small daily doses of antibiotics to "prevent" disease is virtually indistinguishable from giving them small daily doses to promote growth. A 2014 Pew analysis found no fewer than 66 antibiotic products that the FDA allows to be used for "disease prevention" at levels that are "fully within the range of growth promotion dosages and with no limit on the duration of treatment." In other words,you change the language you use to describe the practice and continue giving your herd of 4000 confined pigs the same old daily dose of antibiotics.
The California bill, too, or allows antibiotic use as "prophylaxis to address an elevated risk of contraction of a particular disease or infection," but it adds an important qualification, Kar points out: The drugs can't be used "in a regular pattern." In other words, and no more daily,indiscriminate dosing based on some indistinct notion of "prevention." "We contemplate this [the "regular pattern" language] puts serious restraint on the routine use of antibiotics," Kar said.
The California law won't have an instant impact on national policy, and Kar said,but he pointed out that the bill's passage might embolden several other states with meaningful livestock production, including Oregon and Maryland, or that are considering similar legislation. And California itself is a massive producer of dairy,beef, and chicken.
Source: motherjones.com