Attributable to Ashley Peterson, Ph.D., National Chicken Council vice president of scientific and regulatory affairs:
“Preserving antibiotics’ effectiveness, both in humans and animals, is a responsibility chicken producers take seriously. To that extent, we have supported FDA’s Guidances #209 and #213 that will phase out by 2016 the use of medically important antibiotics in food animals for growth enhancement. We also support FDA’s proposed Veterinary Feed Directive (VFD) that ensures that all antibiotics administered to food producing animals are only done so under the care and prescription of a licensed veterinarian.
“Two classes of antibiotics that FDA deems critically important to human medicine, especially for treating foodborne illness in humans—flouroquinolones and cephalosporins—have already been phased-out of chicken production for a number of years.
“We look forward to working with the new task force as we continue to implement these new FDA policies, especially as the work relates to defining metrics for success and conducting more research in the area of antibiotic resistance.”
For Questions & Answers about antibiotic use in raising chickens, click here.
