A first victory against overuse of antibiotics

Somehow I missed the original announcement, but at the end of July the FDA announced a ban on a poultry antibiotic, Baytril, which is related to the human drug Cipro and has been implicated in increasing bacterial drug-resistance. Yay!!

Margaret Mellon, director of food and environment at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the FDA's move was ''a big deal.''

''It's the first time FDA has withdrawn a veterinary drug on the basis of antibiotic resistance concerns, fearing that use of the drug in animals is going to erode the effectiveness of the drugs in human medicine,'' she said.

Indeed, this drug as a feed supplement does nothing for the health of the chickens, but puts a constant selective pressure on their natural gut bacteria, resulting in mutations which could make critical classes of human drugs ineffective. Now if we could just get moving to stop similar abuses in feeding of hooved livestock...

(via Mike the Mad Biologist)