for anti biotic r es ist ance and morali ty

FARM Facts FARM was formed in September 2013 in order to combat high doses of unnecessary antibiotics for animals in confined animal feeding operations. FARM maintains partnerships with National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, The Chipotle Foundation, Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics, and Keep Antibiotics Working. FARM focuses its efforts on influencing the state legislature in North Carolina in hopes to eventually reach the FDA. Foodborne pathogens on farm and in food in the United States are increasingly resistant to antibiotics. Eighty percent of all antibiotics sold in the U.S. are used on cattle, pigs, and poultry, and other livestock, the vast majority to speed up growth and compensate for crowded, unsanitary conditions. By overusing antibiotics on industrial feedlots and feeding them to animals that don't have bacterial infections we're making the drugs doctors rely on to treat illnesses like pneumonia, strep throat, and childhood ear infections less effective. Industrial farms have been adding antibiotics to livestock feed since 1946, when studies showed that antibiotics caused animals to grow faster and put on weight more efficiently, increasing meat producers' profits. The National Academy of Sciences calculates that increased health care costs associated with antibiotic-resistant bacteria exceed $4 billion each year in the United States alone. According to the Infectious Diseases Society of America, almost 2 million Americans per year develop hospital-acquired infections (HAIs), resulting in 99,000 deaths, the vast majority of which are due to antibacterial (antibiotic)-resistant pathogens. Although everyone is at risk when antibiotics stop working, the threat is greatest for young children, the elderly, and people with weakened immune systems, including cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, organ transplant patients and, in general, people whose health is compromised in some way.

Along with expected decreases in health care costs that would stem from reducing the number of drug resistant infections, there is evidence to show that eliminating GPAs would be profitable for both farmers and the public as a whole. Antibiotic-resistant infections lead to longer illnesses, more hospitalizations, the use of antibiotics with greater side effects, and even death when treatments fail. The AMA is opposed to the use of antimicrobials at nontherapeutic levels in agriculture or as pesticides or growth promoters. Children are at increased risk of acquiring many of the infections with resistant bacteria and are at great risk of severe complications if they become infected. American Nurses Association urge Congress, meat and poultry producers, and bulk purchasers of meat to promptly phase out the non-therapeutic use of medically important antibiotics and the use of fluoroquinolones in poultry. According to FDA data, the quantity of antibiotics sold for livestock use in this country continues to rise,topping 29 million pounds in 2011. Because of the link between antibiotic use in food-producing animals and the occurrence of antibiotic-resistant infections in humans, antibiotics should be used in food-producing animals only under veterinary oversight and only to manage and treat infectious diseases, not to promote growth.