Livestock growers also are fighting efforts to limit antibiotic use. They consider the medications essential to their business, and are rushing as well to protect the FDA from what they consider to be nonscientific influences. At this point, we don't see any evidence of an identifiable problem regarding antibiotic resistance from animal feed. And in the absence of good science showing that, we think it would be a real blunder to ban or limit its use. The European Union asserts that governments can take action when they believe a health danger is present, even if it cannot be scientifically proven at the time.
Researchers agree that many aspects of antibiotic resistance remain unresolved.
Researchers found that chicken treated with fluoroquinolones were being colonized by campylobacter bacteria resistant to the drug, and that those bacteria were being passed to humans. An FDA-commissioned risk assessment concluded in December that at least 5,000 Americans will suffer longer bouts of campylobacter food poisoning annually because of fluoroquinolone resistance passing from chicken to people. But the pathway from Virginiamycin resistance in animals to Synercid resistance in humans is more complex than with campylobacter or salmonella. Virginiamycin in feed produces resistance in bacteria called enterococci, which inhabit the intestines of humans and animals. They generally do not cause disease, and so there is no inherent risk involved with their development of antibiotic resistance.