Slaughter and Waxman Introduce Bill to Gather More Data on Antibiotics in Ag

March 6, 2013 — 

Two leading Democrat members of Congress, Henry Waxman (CA) and Louise Slaughter (NY), introduced legislation this week aimed at providing more detail on the amount and use of antimicrobial drugs given to animals raised for food.

The legislation, dubbed the Delivering Antimicrobial Transparency in Animals (DATA) Act, says it will help public health officials and scientists "better understand and interpret trends and variations in antimicrobial resistance" and identify interventions for preventing and controlling drug resistance.

Waxman said that more information would allow scientists and Congress to start down the "path to sensible regulation."

The bill would require drug manufacturers to obtain and provide better information to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on how their antimicrobial drugs are used in each class of food animals, data that FDA currently does not have, but has asked for.

The DATA Act would require large-scale producers of poultry, swine, and other livestock to submit detailed annual reports to the agency on type and amount of antibiotics contained in the feed given to their animals.

The bill would mandate that FDA report breakdowns on the percentage of antimicrobials sold for growth promotion and feed efficiency, disease prevention, disease control and disease treatment. On top of that, the agency would have to provide a breakdown on drugs sold or distributed in each state and the quantity of drugs sold for each class of animals. Currently, FDA only reports on the total number of kilograms sold for use in animals for several classes of antibiotics.

Source: Food Safety News
February 27, 2013
By Helena Bottemiller