California Governor Vetoes Antibiotic Resistance Bill, Critics Cheer

Responding to pressure from environmental groups, last week California Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a controversial bill that was designed, on the surface, to regulate antibiotic use in livestock.

In a short statement released Sept. 29, Brown stated that the bill did little more than “codify a Federal Drug Administration standard [Guidance 213, or GFI 213] that phases out antibiotic use for growth promotion.” Reinforcing the standard was necessary, said Brown, “because most major animal producers have already pledged to go beyond [it]."

Instead, he is assembling a task force to find "new and effective ways" to reduce antibiotic use in animal stocks.

But what the state standard would have done is as interesting as what it wouldn’t have accomplished.

First, its failings: As the Brown administration pointed out, the state standard wouldn’t have done anything to appreciably change the status quo when it came to antibiotic use in animals. As Jonathan Kaplan, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s food and agriculture program, pointed out: SB 835 would have “condoned the routine use of many of the same drugs for prophylactic disease prevention – even as a substitute for better animal living conditions and good husbandry practices.” And just as important, Kaplan noted, it “would not have required a net reduction of antibiotic use.”

So, while California’s SB 835 would have made it harder for drugs to be used in growth promotion, it would still have condoned the use of drugs for prophylactic (preventative) use.

To understand why environmental and health groups have been sounding the alarm on this issue, consider that it is prophylactic use of antibiotics that has been at the heart of issues surrounding the Foster Farms drug-resistant salmonella Heidelberg infections. It’s also a practice that environmental groups like the NRDC asked Foster Farms, at the height of those infections, to stop using.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Foster Farms Vice President of Technical Services Robert O’Connor has acknowledged that the company uses antibiotics for prophylactic reasons. President and CEO Ron Foster maintains that it’s necessary for the health of the birds. The admission has intensified the debate around whether regular administration of antibiotics in animals increases antibiotic resistance, as has been already shown to be true in humans. While preventative use of antibiotics has not been blamed as the cause for the Foster Farms Heidelberg outbreak, critics of this practice have been calling for more regulation of prophylactic use of antibiotics. SB 835, however, would not have addressed this issue.

Now, for what SB 835 would have done: Federal GFI 209, and its follow-up, GFI 213, both have an interesting codicil that is often too lightly considered: They are non-binding. Neither has the force of law to ensure that meat producers don’t administer growth-inducing antibiotics; they simply provide counsel to livestock owners, drug producers and veterinarians. But they don’t enforce any of the oversight that environmentalists, health advocates or animal rights groups have been calling for. GFI 209 offers steps and voluntary measures to limit the use of antimicrobial drugs to “judicious use.” GFI follows this up with further gentle guidance on administering therapeutic drugs to livestock, and includes a bold reminder that the FDA guidance for information publications “do not establish legally enforceable responsibilities [but] should be viewed only as recommendations.”

SB 835 would have codified non-enforceable standards that are still very much in discussion and are considered to have their own shortcomings. While SB 835 might have provided more teeth for ensuring that growth-promoting drugs were phased out in the country’s fourth-largest beef-producing state, I wonder what the impact would have been on the ongoing effort to regulate those practices it did condone. Precedents become difficult stones to overturn, especially when they are put into law. And that may be one of the reasons that the FDA it seems reticent to enforce a pressing but controversial issue like antibiotic use in our food.

Sen. Jerry Hill (D), who worked tirelessly to promote SB 835, noted that removing all antibiotics from animal care removes a tool that may be vital to fighting disease and in the end could result in unnecessary suffering for the animal. It’s a valid point that led to the creation of antibiotics in the first place. Before such resources, humans and animals suffered needless amputations or deaths. Remedies for fairly minor infections called for long, often painful treatments. In the end, the patient was often at risk of dying from treatment instead of the disease.

But the issue of antibiotic overuse also has a troubling history: Antibiotic resistance goes back almost as long as the creation of penicillin and sulfa. Resistance was rampant at in hospitals the mid-1900s, and was later curbed by changes in how drugs were administered. Less than a century later, we’re still dealing with the aftermath.

“[Antibiotic] resistance is a multifaceted problem,” says Hill, who acknowledges that more work needs to be done to address the use of antimicrobial drugs in livestock. And, as NRDC has pointed out, getting to the root of when such medications are needed requires first addressing the way livestock are raised and cared for. It’s a valid point that some smaller organic and free-range livestock producers have already championed. Consumer health risks aren’t always determined by how we treat the livestock we raise for food, but it’s certainly a good point to at which to start.

Image credit: USDA NRCS