BU Now » agribusiness http://blogs.bu.edu/bunow News, information and research from Boston University Wed, 21 Sep 2011 18:14:24 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.4 The FDA and antibiotics for animals http://blogs.bu.edu/bunow/2010/07/14/the-fda-and-antibiotics-for-animals/ http://blogs.bu.edu/bunow/2010/07/14/the-fda-and-antibiotics-for-animals/#comments Wed, 14 Jul 2010 20:54:33 +0000 Dick Taffe http://blogs.bu.edu/bunow/?p=6360 factory farmIn hopes of slowing the growing scourge of killer bacteria, the Food and Drug Administration has released a policy document that says agricultural uses of antibiotics should be limited to assuring animal health.  But the FDA again stopped short of banning antibiotics in feed given cattle, chickens and pigs — as European regulators already have.  School of Public Health associate Professor Wendy Heiger-Bernays, in a BU Today interview, says until a major food-related illness alerts Americans to the dangers of the industrialized food suply, it’s a battle that agribusiness will continue to win.

“If the public wakes up and looks at where their food is coming from, I suspect there’ll be a significant push … But I don’t think we’re going to see something significant until we have numbers of cases of illness in the human population traced back to factory farms.”

Contact Wendy Heiger-Bernays, 617-638-4620, whb@bu.edu

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