CONGRESSMAN BOSWELL TESTIFIES BEFORE THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON RULES
Washington , DC - Today, Congressman Leonard Boswell, a member of the House Agriculture Committee, testified on H.R. 1549, the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act of 2009.
"Having spent most of my life involved in animal agriculture I was pleased to testify before the Rules Committee," Boswell said. "The rise in antibiotic resistance is an issue we must address. However, H.R. 1549 wrongly blames human resistance issues on the use of antibiotics in animals. Pound for pound, humans and their pets use 10 times the amount of antibiotics used in food animal production. As policy makers, we must make decisions based on sound science."
Below is Congressman Boswell's full testimony.
Testimony for the record
Congressman Leonard L. Boswell
Before the House Committee on Rules
H.R. 1549, the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act of 2009
H-313, the Capitol
July 13, 2009
2:30pm
Chairwoman Slaughter, Ranking Member Drier and members of the Rules Committee, I would like to thank you for allowing me the opportunity to testify here today. I have spent most of my life involved in animal agriculture and have seen first-hand the responsible use of antibiotics.
I understand the issues that affect the livestock, dairy and poultry industries having spent most of my youth working in livestock production and today I still have a hand in managing a cow-calf operation on my farm in Lamoni , Iowa . Once I retired from 20 years in the Army I moved back to Iowa to begin farming. I sat down with my local veterinarian to discuss the use of antibiotics to treat sick animals and prevent future illness. From my experience with producers and veterinarians, the thoughtful use of antibiotics is not the exception, it's the rule.
During the 110th Congress, it was my privilege to serve as Chairman of the Agriculture Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy and Poultry. On September 25th of last year, we held a hearing to review the advances in animal health within the livestock industry. We were specifically looking at how antibiotics are used on America's livestock farms. Our witnesses included veterinarians from USDA's Animal Health and Plant Inspection Service and FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM), producers, veterinary practitioners and academics from across the country. We believe that we heard from a good cross-section of the users of the animal health products, the doctors responsible for the use of antibiotics and the experts studying the resistance trends from use of antibiotics in animals.
As the Subcommittee members listened to the witnesses, it became very clear that America's livestock, dairy and poultry producers have a responsibility to safeguard animal health and public health. A responsibility they take very seriously. They are committed to using antibiotics responsibly and have developed responsible-use guidelines for each of their respective industries. They didn't develop these guidelines because Congress told them to do so; they developed the guidelines because it was the right thing to do for their animals and their consumers.
I think that the perspectives the witnesses shared at our hearing last year are important to the discussion here today about H.R. 1549, the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act of 2009. I would like to take a few moments to take what we learned from that hearing in terms of what H.R. 1549 would do to the livestock industry.
H.R. 1549 would remove seven classes of antibiotics from the market unless sponsors can demonstrate that they are safe and effective. Our witnesses clearly outlined the rigorous approval process that animal antibiotics must go through to gain approval already. All antibiotics used to keep animals healthy have passed the in-depth FDA process, and have been shown to be safe and effective and have undergone review for their potential to cause increased antibiotic resistance. H.R. 1549 would require antibiotic sponsors to prove again what has already been proven during their initial FDA approval. This FDA process is a stringent, science-based regulatory review takes years and millions of dollars. Requiring another step undermines the FDA's process of reviewing the human health impacts of individual animal drugs based on science and risk assessment.
Our witnesses also shared with us that not many antibiotics are currently available for use in livestock. H.R. 1549 overlooks the legitimate veterinary need to preserve these antibiotic classes for use in food animals to ensure that healthy animals enter the food chain. There are few new antibiotics anticipated for approval by FDA, so if H.R. 1549 is enacted and products are removed from the market place, America's livestock producers will be left with few, if any, medicines to prevent and control animal disease. H.R. 1549 will result in more sick animals and it is my fear that it will leave us with a potentially less safe food supply.
In the mid-1990's the European Union made a decision to phase out the use of antibiotics as growth promoters. Denmark , which had a pork industry roughly equivalent to the size of the pork herd in Iowa (which is the largest pork producing state in the country), instituted a full voluntary ban in 1998 which became mandatory in 2000. Many proponents of restricting the use of certain animal antibiotics as a model often point to this ban instituted in Denmark, citing a drop in total tons of antibiotics used in pork production in that country. When you ban the use of a product, it is self-evident that usage rates would drop. Citing this obvious consequence as a rationale for restrictions in other countries borders on the illogical. Interestingly, what the proponents never seem to discuss are the other effects of that ban. I would like to call your attention to the testimony received in my Subcommittee where these effects were discussed in detail. Some of our witnesses had even visited Denmark and seen first-hand the downturn in swine health in that country.
After the ban became fully implemented in 1999, Danish pork producers saw an immediate increase in post-weaning diarrhea and an increase in piglet mortality, which has had long lasting effects on the Danish pig industry. The increase in piglet deaths and the overall impact on animal well-being might be acceptable if it resulted in improvements to public health, but such improvements have not materialized. And while overall use of antibiotics in Denmark declined, there has been a marked increase in the therapeutic use of antibiotics - those used to treat and control diseases. Today, the use of therapeutic antibiotics in Danish pigs now surpasses what was used to prevent disease and promote growth prior to the ban in 1999 and continues to rise each year. I think the Danish pork industry can now attest to the validity of the age-old cliché: "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure!"
As for costs, a 2009 Iowa State University study estimated that the effect of a ban in the United States similar to Denmark's would raise the cost of production by $6 per pig in the first year after such a prohibition; 10 years after the ban, the cumulative cost to the U.S. pork industry would exceed $1 billion.
A recent study by Dr. Scott Hurd, associate professor at Iowa State University 's College of Veterinary Medicine and former U.S. Department of Agriculture Deputy Under Secretary for Food Safety, demonstrated that when pigs have been sick during their life, those pigs will have a greater presence of food-safety pathogens on their carcasses. This is a serious implication that must be considered when looking at the costs and benefits of antibiotic use in livestock.
In all discussions on antibiotic use in food animal production, we need to be clear what the issue really is. H.R. 1549 is confusing the problem of antibiotic resistance in general with the faulty proposition that blames human resistance issues on antibiotic use in animals. Most informed scientists and public health professions acknowledge that the problem of antibiotic resistance in humans is overwhelmingly an issue related to human drug use.
A 2006 report from the Institute of Food Technologists, an international scientific society, said "eliminating antibiotic drugs from food animal production may have little positive effect on resistant bacteria that threaten human health." In fact, eliminating animal antibiotics may be detrimental to public health.
As our witnesses outlined for my subcommittee, antibiotic-resistant bacteria develop from many factors, including human use of antibiotics and routine household use of disinfectants such as antibacterial soap. According to a paper published in 2001 in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, people and their pets on a per-pound basis use 10 times the amount of antibiotics that are used in food animal production. More than 95 percent of the antibiotics used for animals are devoted to treating them for disease conditions, not as growth promoters as many claim.
Protecting human health and providing safe food are paramount concerns of America's livestock producers. That is why we test for antibiotics residue as part of our food safety programs. The FDA establishes withdrawal times or withholding periods which are times after drug treatment when milk and eggs are not to be used for food, and during which animals are not to be slaughtered.
If I may speak specifically to H.R. 1549, two-thirds of the bill has been enacted into law and should be allowed to work before removing products from market. Provisions requiring more USDA research into the causes of and solutions to antibiotic resistance were passed as part of the Farm Bill in 2008. The Animal Drug User Fee Amendments of 2008 require FDA to collect antibiotic sales data from companies and make a summary of that data public. The provisions were designed to provide better information to researchers conducting risk assessments and should be allowed to yield information before products are removed from the market. Congress has already taken action, and we should see the results from our action before we start removing antibiotics from the market.
Risk assessments are an important tool in approving antibiotics and ensuring that they are not harming public health. Voluntary risk assessments have been done by sponsors, and FDA is now requiring specific risk assessments for new and existing antibiotic products. Dr. Randy Singer, a veterinarian and epidemiologist working at the University of Minnesota , testified last September about a risk assessment in which he participated. His team assessed the risk of the agricultural use of the macrolide family of antibiotics poses to human health. The research hypothesis was that since macrolide-antibiotics are also used in human medicine, the use of macrolide antibiotics in animal agriculture could compromise the efficacy of these antibiotics in human medicine and potentially increase the number of macrolide-resistant bacterial infections in people. The team developed a risk assessment model following the format of FDA's guidance document #152. Dr. Singer and his team of researchers found that all macrolide antibiotic uses in animal agriculture in the U.S. posed a very low risk to human health. The highest risk was associated with macrolide-resistant Campylobacter infections acquired from poultry, but this risk was still estimated to be less than 1 in l0 million and would thus meet the standard of "reasonable certainty of no harm" employed by FDA-CVM.
Dr. Singer also shared with us that animal illness likely plays a critical role in reducing the chances of contamination during processing. He participated with a team that developed a mathematical model relating animal illness to human illness. In this model, there was a large increase in human illness associated with small increases in animal illness. This suggested to the group that agricultural management strategies that fail to employ the judicious use of antibiotics may have significant negative impacts on human health. While I accept that there are those who will always believe that antibiotics administered in feed at low doses over several weeks raise hypothetical concerns about their potential to increase rates of resistance, in my opinion the evidence is undeniable that these applications improve animal health. Antibiotic uses in animals therefore have human health benefits. This goes back to our livestock producers' moral obligation to care for their animals and protect public health.
If policy decisions are going to be made regarding antibiotic use, we need to use the proper tool for making those decisions; risk assessments are the most appropriate tool, as Dr. Singer described to my subcommittee. Decisions made without considering the results of scientific risk assessments will result in unintended consequences, including increased animal death and disease and increased risks to public health as we saw in the Denmark example.
As your witnesses today discuss a topic that is important to the livestock producers in not just my district and home state but yours as well, I sincerely hope that you consider what my subcommittee learned last Congress. H.R. 1549 will have detrimental effects, not only on our farmers who feed the world safe and wholesome meat and meat products, but also on public health.
Again I would like to thank you for allowing me the opportunity to testify before you today. I hope as a farmer and user of antibiotics I have offered you some insight into the livestock industry's perspective. In the United States we are very blessed to have the safest, most plentiful, and most affordable food supply in the world. As policy makers we must take a hard look at how our decisions affect human health and our ability to feed ourselves and the world.
I'd be happy to answer any questions. Thank you.
