Hogging Our Drugs

Anti-CAFO ads running in DC Metro 1

File this under intriguing. From Ag Professional (via a press release, I think)

A new ad campaign is asking area commuters and people visiting Capitol Hill “Who’s hogging our antibiotics?”

The series of ads, revealed in D.C. Metro stations and trains this week by the Pew Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming, is part of the project’s national effort to end the misuse of antibiotics in food animal production. The group says up to 70 percent of human antibiotics are being fed to animals on factory farms, promoting the development of deadly strains of drug-resistant bacteria that can spread to humans.

“Human antibiotics are routinely misused on industrial farms to compensate for crowded, stressful and unsanitary conditions,” said Laura Rogers, a project director with the Pew Health Group. “The way we are raising our food animals is putting human health at risk.”

The ads can be seen in the Capitol South and Union Station Metro stops during June, as well as in Metro cars on the red and blue/orange line trains. A version of the ads will also be appearing soon online and in newspapers on Capitol Hill.

There is currently a bill that would restrict sub-therapeutic use of antibiotics pending in both the House and Senate (as well as one working its way through the California legislature).

And on the other end of the spectrum, you have the new worldwide advocacy group Avaaz.org, a collaboration between Moveon.org and Res Publica (with the SIEU as a major funder), with an anti-CAFO petition that garnered 200,000 signatures in six days. Is the anti-CAFO movement approaching critical mass…?

Tom is a media and technology professional who thinks that wrecking the planet is a bad idea. He twitters madly and blogs here and at Beyond Green about food policy, alternative energy, climate science and politics as well as the multiple and various effects of living on a warming planet.

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  1. Union of Concerned Scientists Posted 1:24 pm
    21 Jul 2009

    This is a timely post about an issue of great concern for human health! Currently Congress is considering the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (PAMTA), a bill to restrict the use of antibiotics in the feed and water of animals that are not sick. This “nontherapeutic” use of antibiotics accounts for an estimated 70 percent of the use of these drugs, and leads to the development of drug resistant bacteria that is easily transmitted to humans through direct contact with animals, as in the Johns Hopkins research; through consumption of tainted meat; or even through cross-contamination of other foods from raw and undercooked meat. Within two years of enactment, PAMTA would require the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to re-review the approvals it previously issued for animal feed uses of the seven classes of antibiotics that are important to human medicine. Any found to be unsafe from a resistance point of view will have their approvals rescinded. Pennsylvania’s members of Congress are in key positions to ensure passage of this legislation. Send a letter to your representative and Senators Casey and Specter today by visiting:https://secure3.convio.net/ucs/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=1924 Passage of PAMTA is critical to keep antibiotics working for human health. In addition to averting the harmful effects of antibiotic overuse on human health, curtailing animal use of antibiotics will encourage producers to raise animals in better living conditions that are less conducive to disease. Many Pennsylvania farmers already know that it is possible and profitable to raise animals without nontherapeutic use of antibiotics. http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/solutions/wise_antibiotics/pamta.html Tanvi GadhiaFood & EnvironmentUnion of Concerned Scientists

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