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from the use of antimicrobials in food animals, and some models predict an increased human health burden if the use is withdrawn," Dr.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

We’ve been invited to testify about the use of antibiotics in food animals and its impact on our health before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on Tuesday, June 24. (Check  out the above link to see who’s on the committee – it’s really a who’s who of Senate powerbrokers, chaired by the remarkable Senator Edward Kennedy.) Testifying for us at the hearing will be Dr. Lyle Vogel, AVMA’s Assistant Executive Vice President, who has spent many years researching this issue. In the coming weeks, we’ll post Dr. Vogel’s written testimony – and additional info about antibiotic resistance – so that you can keep track and stay informed.

As we prep for the testimony, here’s some insight on the issue….

Antibiotics are among the most important tools a food animal veterinarian has in the ongoing battle to keep our food safe. Many folks don’t know that penicillin and tetracycline, two drugs everyone knows as human drugs, are crucial to keeping salmonella and other bacteria out of our food supply. Veterinarians use these antibiotics in a number of ways to keep our meat, eggs and dairy products free of bacteria and viruses. Obviously, they’d be prescribed for an animal that is sick. But sometimes, the antibiotics are given as a preventative, to help keep animals at a high risk of illness from getting sick.

Why? Well, think about it this way: these animals -- cows, pigs, turkeys, chickens, etc -- live in close groups called herds or flocks. They share food and water. If one animal from the group is sick, the whole herd has to be treated because it is very likely that the bacteria or illness has already spread to the others in the group. This is similar to treating students who have been exposed to another student with bacterial meningitis at school. And I think we can all agree that we do not want sick animals or salmonella and other bacteria in the foods we eat.

Sounds complicated, doesn’t it? Well, it is. Thankfully, we don’t have to make these decisions ourselves daily. We don’t have to constantly worry if each bite of meat, each sip of milk is safe to consume. And this is because veterinarians are out there making these tough calls – decisions about animal health and its impact on human health.