Bill to Limit Antibiotics in Livestock Gains Support

by: Jill Richardson

Sun Dec 27, 2009 at 22:09:31 PM PST

The bill does not ban all antibiotics in livestock. If an animal is sick, of course the farmer should be able to treat it. The ban will be on nontherapeutic uses (i.e. when an animal is NOT sick) classes of antibiotics that are used in human medicine. The goal is exactly like the name of the bill says - to prevent the evolution of bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics used to treat humans. This bill was introduced into the House by Louise Slaughter, and she's got a microbiology background. The Senate version was introduced by Ted Kennedy and it's unfortunate that he won't be around to vote for it. I've included a full list of Senate co-sponsors below. If either of your Senators aren't on the list, shoot 'em an email and ask them to co-sponsor it.

A War On Drugs I Can Support

by: Jill Richardson

Thu Mar 19, 2009 at 08:00:00 AM PDT

Following Nicholas Kristof's fantastic op ed Pathogens in our Pork, today Louise Slaughter and Ted Kennedy each introduced bills into the House and Senate, respectively, that would ban 7 classes of antibiotics from nontherapeutic use in livestock.

There are a few reasons why these bills are so good. First, the problem of antibiotic resistance is reversible. It's not "too late" and stopping the practice of nontherapeutic antibiotic use (i.e. giving drugs to animals who aren't sick for disease prevention or growth promotion) WILL make a difference. Second, it's important to not only ban drugs used in human medicine from nontherapeutic use in livestock but entire drug classes as the bill does. This is because a bug that evolves resistance to a drug can easily become resistant to other drugs in the same drug class. In other words, Slaughter and Kennedy really got it right when they wrote this bill.

Federal Obesity Prevention Act of 2008

by: OrangeClouds115

Sun Jul 27, 2008 at 12:46:11 PM PDT

The Federal Obesity Prevention Act of 2008 was developed to respond to the recommendations of public health experts and organizations, including the Institute of Medicine and Trust For America's Health, which have called for more coordinated, sustained federal leadership to address the obesity crisis.  The legislation establishes an interagency task force of department Secretaries or other high level officials to fill that need.  The task force will:

1. Establish a government-wide strategy for preventing and reducing overweight  and obesity that  includes defining clear roles, responsibilities, and accountability for all agencies of the Federal Government;

2. Coordinate effective interagency coordination and priorities for action among Federal agencies, including short-term and long-term goals for childhood and adult obesity rates; and

3. Implement and evaluate the effectiveness of the strategy.

Members of the task force will include the Departments of Health and Human Services, Agriculture, Education, Transportation, Defense, Veterans Affairs, Interior, and Labor as well as the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission.

Let's keep an eye on this and see if it goes anywhere. Then we'll have to see who gets appointed to the task force if it passes, to see if they will actually take the steps needed to curb our obesity epidemic.