Food & Agriculture

Consumer and Public Health Groups Support Additional USDA, FDA Funding to Combat Antibiotic Resistance

CFA and its allies call on Congress to go beyond the Obama Administration’s budget request and to fully fund the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration for activities related to combatting antibiotic resistance. These activities include collecting on-farm antibiotic use data, and research to identify alternatives to antibiotic use in livestock. In the 2016 Omnibus Spending Bill,  Congress provided an additional $380 million to fight the spread of antibiotic resistance, yet none of these funds were allocated for agriculture. Antibiotic sales for food animal production account for 70 percent of total medically important antibiotic sales by volume.