ISU Associate Professor and Former USDA Deputy Undersecretary Food Safety Responds to CBS News Segment on Antibiotics

Antibiotics are given strategically – administered when pigs are sick, susceptible or exposed to illness.

• Antibiotic use is not routine, but targeted when pigs are exposed to illness or are sick.
• Modern pork-production facilities provide animals with an environment designed to keep them safe, healthy and comfortable.

Using antibiotics strategically ensures that the safest meat in the world ends up on America's dinner tables.  

• Danish Government reports show an increase in a variety of human, antibiotic-resistance illness, including a 10-fold increase in MRSA since the ban was put in place.  
• A U.S. congressional fact-finding mission to Denmark last September found no scientific evidence that reducing antibiotic use in agriculture resulted in public health benefits in that country.  
• Denmark recently experienced one of the worst salmonella outbreaks in Danish history.

Only antibiotics approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are used to treat pigs. 

• Farmers work closely with veterinarians to decide which antibiotics to use.
• Post-approval monitoring programs by the FDA are in place to assure antibiotic use is not harming public health.
• There is no conclusive scientific evidence that antibiotics used in food animals have a significant impact on the effectiveness of antibiotics in people. In fact, peer-reviewed studies suggest that over 95 percent of antibiotic resistance concerns in human medicine are unrelated to animal uses of antibiotics.
• Research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, FDA and the United States Department of Agriculture known as the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System, or NARMS, shows that resistance in animal products and foodborne diseases is steady or declining over the past several years.

Pork producers have a 20-year history of continuous improvement working with modern farm production to make pork better, healthier and safer to eat.

• The Pork Quality Assurance Plus® program, started by farmers in 1989, reinforces good on-farm practices that help produce healthy, well-cared-for animals that yield safe food. This national program, taught by veterinarians, university experts and other swine experts, emphasizes the judicious, strategic use of antibiotics.

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