Anti-Antibiotics - LOE 3/2009

"The vast majority of antibiotics aren't used on people - they're fed to farm animals to make them grow faster – or keep them healthy under stressful conditions. Last year farm animals in North Carolina alone consumed more antibiotics than were prescribed for all the people in the United States."

Representative Louise Slaughter says that's got to stop. The New York Representative has introduced a bill in Congress to limit the use of antibiotics on the farm. It's called the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act.

GELLERMAN: I noticed that a lot of chicken companies in the United States have started giving up voluntarily the use of antibiotics.

SLAUGHTER: Yes, I think a lot of people have – mostly because people have, as I said a while ago – this is an entirely new population of thought than we had even four years ago of people who are much more aware. Because of the deaths and the peanut butter scare and the other things – meat recalls – and all the things that they've seen, I think they understand that their food supply's not safe. And that's one of the least things that they could have always been able to expect from us. And it is our job here to make sure that they are safe. So I think this bill will pass much easier and quicklier now. Senator Kennedy will be carrying it in the Senate. We never predict the Senate's actions, but I believe it will pass the House handily.

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