As promised, we’ve posted our full testimony (scroll down) from yesterday’s U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions hearing at which we testified about the positive reasons for using antimicrobials in food animals and reminded the Senators of the need for veterinarians to use antibiotics in livestock to keep our food safe. In the absence of committee chair Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Senator Sherrod Brown, D- Ohio, ran the hearing, which focused primarily on the human implications of MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus).

Dr. Lyle P. Vogel, AVMA's assistant executive vice president, testified for us. He soothed concerns that use of antimicrobials – such as penicillin and tetracycline – in food animals leads to human resistance of the drugs and said that scientific data does not support a ban on the use of antibiotics in food animals to prevent disease.

"Risk assessments demonstrate a very low risk to human health from the use of antimicrobials in food animals, and some models predict an increased human health burden if the use is withdrawn," Dr. Vogel testified. "Non-risk based bans of approved uses of antimicrobials will negatively impact animal health and welfare without predictably improving public health."

Antibiotic resistance in some instances, he added, is ten times greater in Denmark than in the United States despite a Danish ban since the 90s on some uses of the drugs.

Finally, Dr. Vogel told the committee that FDA’s evaluations of antibiotics used in livestock are more stringent than for human antibiotics. The FDA, he said, evaluates each food animal antibiotic for human, environmental and animal safety, and additionally, public and private surveillance systems monitor the use of the drugs for the emergence of antibiotic resistance.

>> Read AVMA's complete written testimony

>> View executive summary of testimony