WASHINGTON, April 20, 2016 - The
Agriculture spending bill would provide USDA $9.9 million to start monitoring
antibiotic resistance on farms, a key part of the Obama administration’s plan
to preserve the effectiveness of the drugs in human medicine. A key to getting
the money in the bill was to assure producers that the information collected
from participating farms won’t be used for regulatory purposes and will be kept
confidential.
Those assurances are spelled out in report language
that was included with the bill. The committee report also calls on USDA
researchers to keep separate the data for antibiotics that are used in human
medicine and those that are not. Ionophores, for example, are widely used in
cattle feed to increase feed efficiency but aren’t given to humans.
Members of the National Pork Producers
Council are actually lobbying lawmakers for the funding this week. NPPC
spokesman David Warner said the group was pleased the information would be
collected under requirements of the Confidential Information Protection and
Statistical Efficiency Act. That’s supposed to ensure that the individual
producer can’t be identified.
Karin Hoelzer, a veterinarian who works on antibiotic policy for the Pew
Charitable Trusts, said the on-farm monitoring would be a “huge step forward.”
There are now only “very limited data on how antibiotics are used on farms,”
she said.
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