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NPPC: No evidence of antibiotics link
According to a group called Health Care Without Harm, more than one-thousand doctors and other clinical care providers have signed requests for Congress to restrict the use of non-therapeutic antibiotics in animals raised for food. And the group says 300 hospitals have signed pledges to purchase only meat raised without antibiotics for their foodservice programs.
But Dr. Howard Hill, a veterinarian with Iowa Select Farms and a director of the National Pork Producers Council, says one big question remains unanswered.
“Is there a linkage between the use of antibiotics in animals and an increased resistance of antibiotics–of the bacteria that effect humans? That linkage has never been proven,” says Hill.
Hill says experts from both the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health have stated that no such link exists.
“We feel like we need to make decisions on good risk analysis and good science, not based on false science or emotion,” said Hill.
Hill says more research must be conducted on the causes of antibiotic resistance before any antibiotics are banned or restricted from use in food animal production. He says the risk of not using antibiotics—including a greater presence of food-safety pathogens in meat—could outweigh any risk associated with using them.
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