Wayne Pacelle: A Humane Nation | The Humane Society of the United States

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Wayne Pacelle: A Humane Nation | The Humane Society of the United States

Bush's Toxic Changes

Posted: 16 Dec 2008 05:52 PM CST

In its waning days, the Bush Administration is racing against the clock to

grease the skids for the factory farming industry. The Administration has always

been aligned with Big Agriculture, but these new regulations are an astonishing

abdication of the government’s regulatory responsibility. The Obama

Administration will have to contend with these pernicious moves and plan on

rolling them back to protect the public.

In late November, the Food and Drug Administration reversed its prior

regulatory commitments to bar the “extralabel†use of certain antibiotics on

the nation’s billions of cows, pigs, and chickens raised for food. The term

extralabel, or " off-label, " refers to using drugs for purposes other than for

what they were intended—such as taking an antibiotic approved to treat

respiratory diseases among cows and administering the drug to chickens.

Antibiotics are supposed to be administered to fight illness and infection.

But an estimated 70 percent of the antimicrobial drugs used in the United States

are fed in low doses to animals on factory farms to promote faster growth and

keep the animals from getting sick in their filthy, overcrowded environment.

Major medical and public health groups, including the American Medical

Association, say that the rampant use of such drugs on farm animals is a

prescription for fostering the growth of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. This has

the potential to render antibiotics unusable in fighting human health problems.

And just last week, the Environmental Protection Agency decided to exclude

these factory farms from certain pollution regulations, including not requiring

them to report dangerous levels of air pollution to the agency. Industrialized

intensive animal production facilities will now be allowed to manage the

enormous volumes of manure and noxious gases they produce without federal

oversight or reporting responsibilities. The Baltimore Sun addressed the issue

on its editorial page today.

President-elect Barack Obama has already announced a strong team to head the

EPA and other environmental positions, and dismantling these last-second

giveaways to industry should be a priority.

 

 

 

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