The sales of antibiotics for livestock use has risen in the past few years, raising concerns about the increasing health risk associated with the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Although many companies have promised to cut the use of antibiotics in meat, a new report published Thursday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration revealed that antibiotic use in agriculture has actually gone up by 23 percent from 2009 to 2014.
The use of medically important antibiotics in meat has increased three percent from 2013 to 2014, while that for all kinds of antibiotics has increased four percent for the same time period.
"This summary report reflects sales and distribution information for 2014, the year after the FDA's announcement of its judicious use strategy for antibiotics that are important in human medicine and are also used in feed or water of food-producing animals," the FDA said in a news release.
The report did not give the specific antibiotics used, what they were used for and how much of them were dispensed.
Antibiotics should be used "judiciously in humans and animals because both users contribute to the emergence, persistence and spread of resistant bactera," the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System for Enteric Bacteria (NARMS) recommended.
Researchers from China have reported a strain of bacteria that has breached the last line of antibiotic defense, meaning it has developed resistance to all kinds of antibiotics. Recently, the same strain was spotted in Denmark, alarming scientists worldwide.
"Dangerous overuse of antibiotics by the agricultural industry has been on the rise at an alarming rate in recent years, putting the effectiveness of our life-saving drugs in jeopardy for people when they get sick," Avinash Kar, senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Reuters.
Rep. Louise Slaughter said the FDA's findings is "disgraceful since it came after the FDA issued voluntary guidance they claimed would actually reduce the use of antibiotics in agriculture."
