USA - Farmers, Doctors Battle Over New Drug For Dairy Cows
Published: May 22, 2007
Source : High Plains Journal
Farmers like John Vrieze are looking to the Food and Drug Administration to approve cefquinome, a powerful antibotic that could combat "shipping fever," a pneumonia-like illness commonly found in cows.
"If she gets sick and needs an antibiotic, we ought to be able to give her the latest, best, technologically advanced antibiotic we can," said Vrieze, who runs the 2,600-head Emerald Dairy farm.
But a panel of medical experts recently recommended the Food and Drug Administration not approve the drug, saying it could encourage the evolution of antibiotic resistant bacteria.
"You're climbing up a ladder until you get to where there's only a few drugs left" to kill the toughest germs, said Steve Roach, public health director of the Chicago-based nonprofit Food Animal Concerns Trust.
The case has grabbed the attention of consumers interested in how food is grown, pesticide use and animal welfare.
The FDA declined to comment on the controversy, saying it continues to collect information on cefquinome.
Veterinarians don't really need the drug to treat shipping fever because other antibiotics work on the illness, said Kevin Funk, a large animal veterinarian. But they would like to have more drugs approved to treat ailments such as mastitis, a milk duct infection for which there's no injectable antibiotic, he said. Right now, vets use drugs approved for other illnesses to try to fight the disease.
"Our choices are really limited," Funk said.
Doctors and others say they worry that cefquinome would eventually be used for a variety of ailments even if it is approved only to treat shipping fever.
"There's kind of a loophole in the way that they approve these things, in that if they do gain this initial approval for cattle, it's going to be far easier for them to get expanded use in a number of different species," Minnesota epidemiologist Kirk Smith said. "It may not be a huge deal right now, but this might open the floodgates for much more use down the road."
The more a drug is used, the more likely a bacteria is to develop immunity to it.
That's why the American Medical Association, Infectious Disease Society of America and Union of Concerned Scientists oppose the use of cefquinome in animals. They worry it would eventually foster resistance to the related human drug cefepime, which is used on infections in cancer patients and on tough infections that do not respond to other antibiotics.
But vets and farmers said doctors overprescribe antibiotics, and some believe they are being punished for practices in hospitals.
The debate shouldn't be about whether people or animals deserve the best drugs, veterinarian Matthew Boyle said. Instead, doctors and vets should focus on using drugs appropriately, he said.
Vrieze said the whole argument doesn't make sense to him.
"I tell people that don't want us to use therapeutic antibiotics on these cows: 'I use it on my kids, and I use it on my pets; why wouldn't I use it on my cows?'" he said.
Plus, he added, federal regulations require farmers to keep cows who have received antibiotics out of the milking parlor until the drug washes out of their systems.
"If there's antibiotic resistance," Vrieze said, "it's not coming from the dairy industry."
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