The title of this post at Wired's Superbug blog says it all:
The Pew Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming (of the Pew Charitable Trusts) has been tracking this data year to year, and this year retrieved some additional data from the human side of the pharma industry to use as a comparison. They found that human-use antibiotics totaled 3.5 million kilograms, or 7.7 million pounds, in 2011.
It’s worth noting that this continued antibiotic use, and continued and rising appearance of resistant bacteria on meat, is happening as the FDA has abandoned attempting to regulate livestock producers’ use of antibiotics, and has switched to a voluntary approach. Given the trend, I think it’s worth asking how well that voluntary approach is going to work.
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