California Legislature—2015–16 Regular Session

Assembly Bill No. 49

Introduced by Assembly Member Mullin

December 1, 2014

An act relating to livestock drugs.

LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL’S DIGEST

AB 49, as introduced, Mullin. Livestock drugs: antibiotics.

Under existing law, the Department of Food and Agriculture is responsible for enforcing provisions relating to the importation of animals, milk and milk products, produce dealers, and other agricultural regulations. Existing law requires the Secretary of Food and Agriculture to make and enforce provisions relating to the manufacture, sale, and use of livestock drugs.

This bill would make various legislative findings and declarations relating to the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics in livestock, and would declare the intent of the Legislature to enact legislation that would address the overuse of antibiotics in livestock production.

Vote: majority. Appropriation: no. Fiscal committee: no. State-mandated local program: no.

The people of the State of California do enact as follows:

SECTION 1.  

The Legislature finds and declares all of the
following:

(a)  In 1977, the United States Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) concluded that feeding livestock low doses of antibiotics
from antibiotic classes that are used in human disease treatment
could promote the development of antibiotic-resistance in bacteria
and pose a risk to human health. The FDA, however, did not act
in response to these findings, despite laws requiring the agency to
do so.

(b)  The FDA issued voluntary guidance in December 2013 on
the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics; however, this guidance is
unlikely to significantly reduce the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics
in livestock because of a broad exemption allowing for the use of
antibiotics for disease prevention.

(c)  Not only do antibiotic-resistant bacteria affect the health of
our society, but they also have a monetary impact. In 1998, the
National Academy of Sciences noted that antibiotic-resistant
bacteria generate a minimum of four to five billion dollars in costs
to United States society and individuals every year. In 2009, in a
study funded by the federal Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, Cook County Hospital and Alliance for Prudent Use
of Antibiotics estimated that the total health care cost of
antibiotic-resistant infections in the United States was between
$16.6 billion and $26 billion annually. Societal costs from lost
productivity due to illnesses were estimated to be an additional
$35 billion.

(d)  In April 1999, the United States Government Accountability
Office conducted a study concluding that three strains of
microorganisms that cause foodborne illnesses or disease in humans
are resistant to antibiotics and are linked to the use of antibiotics
in animals. These microorganisms that cause foodborne illnesses
or disease in humans are resistant to antibiotics and are linked to
the use of antibiotics in animals. These microorganisms are
salmonella, campylobacter, and E. Coli.

(e)  In 1999, 2006, and 2011, the United States Department of
Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service
conducted large-scale, voluntary surveys that revealed all of the
following:

(1)  Eighty-four percent of grower and finisher swine farms, 83
percent of cattle feedlots, and 84 percent of sheep farms administer
antimicrobials in feed or water for either health or growth
promotion reasons.

(2)  Many of the antimicrobials that were identified were
identical or closely related to drugs used in human medicine,
including tetracyclines, macrolides, bactricin, penicilllins, and
sulfonamides.

(3)  These drugs are used in people to treat serious diseases,
such as pneumonia, scarlet fever, rheumatic fever, sexually
transmitted infections, and skin infections; pandemics such as
malaria and plague; and bioterrorism agents such as anthrax.

(f) In June 2002, the peer-reviewed journal, “Clinical Infectious
Diseases,” published a report based on a two-year review, by
experts in human and veterinary medicine, public health,
microbiology, biostatistics, and risk analysis, of more than 500
scientific studies on the human health impacts of antimicrobial
use in agriculture. The report recommended that antimicrobial
agents should not be used in agriculture in the absence of disease
and should be limited to therapy for diseased individual animals
or prophylaxis when disease is documented in a herd or flock.

(g) In a March 2003 report, the National Academy of Sciences
stated that a decrease in antimicrobial use in human medicine alone
will have little effect on the rise in antibiotic-resistant bacteria and
that substantial efforts must be made to decrease the inappropriate
overuse of antimicrobials in animals and agriculture.

(h) In 2010, the peer-reviewed journal, “Molecular Cell,”
published a study demonstrating that a low-dosage use of
antibiotics causes a dramatic increase in genetic mutation, raising
new concerns about the agricultural practice of using low-dosage
antibiotics in order to stimulate growth promotion and routinely
prevent disease in unhealthy conditions.

(i) In 2010, the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration
testified that the Danish ban of the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics
in food animal production resulted in a marked reduction in
antimicrobial resistance in multiple bacterial species, including
Campylobacter and Enterococci.

(j) In 2011, the FDA found that in 2010:

(1) Thirteen million five hundred thousand kilograms of
antibacterial drugs were sold for use on food animals in the United
States.

(2) Three million three hundred thousand kilograms of
antibacterial drugs were used for human health.

(3) Eighty percent of antibacterial drugs, and over 70 percent
of medically important antibacterial drugs, disseminated in the
United States were sold for use on food-producing animals, rather
than being used for human health.

(k) In 2011, a review of all scientific studies on antimicrobial
use in farm animals, published in Clinical Microbiology Reviews,
found the following:

(1) That the use of antibiotics in food-producing animals leads
to the development of reservoirs of antibiotic resistance, that
antibiotic-resistant bacteria can spread through food, water, air,
soil, and meat-industry workers, and that bacteria can share
resistance genes with each other.

(2) A ban on nontherapeutic antibiotic use in food-producing
animals would preserve the use of antibiotics for medicine.

(3) A Danish ban on nontherapeutic antibiotics in
food-producing animals resulted in little change in animal
morbidity and mortality, and only a modest increase in production
cost.

(l) The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC) concluded in a recent report, “Antibiotic Resistance Threats
in the United States, 2013,” that overuse or misuse of antibiotics
contributes to the spread of antibiotic resistance, whether in human
medicine or in agriculture. The CDC estimated that antibiotic
resistance causes at least 23,000 deaths and two million illnesses
every year.

(m) In 2013, the peer-reviewed journal, “The Journal of the
American Medical Association,” published a study showing higher
levels of antibiotic-resistant skin and soft-tissue infections in people
living in proximity to hog farms or fields treated with swine manure
in Pennsylvania. Similarly, in 2014, the peer-reviewed journal,
“Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology,” published a study
focused on hospitalized veterans in rural areas of Iowa, finding
that people living in close proximity to a swine-feeding operation
were nearly three times as likely to have been affected by
methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) at the time
of admission to the hospital.

(n) The FDA’s National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring
System routinely finds that retail meat products are contaminated
with bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics that are important to
human medicine.

(o) According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, “the
largest nonhuman use of antimicrobial agents is in food-producing
animal production, and most of this is in healthy animals to increase
growth or prevent diseases. Evidence now exists that these uses
of antimicrobial agents in food-producing animals have a direct
negative impact on human health and multiple impacts on the
selection and dissemination of resistance genes in animals and the
environment. Children are at increased risk of acquiring many of
these infections with resistant bacteria and are at great risk of
severe complications if they become infected.”

(p) Many scientific studies confirm that the nontherapeutic use
of antibiotics in food-producing animals contributes to the
development of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections in people.

(q) The spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria poses a risk to the
health of Californians and reduced use of antibiotics for livestock
production is likely to reduce the risks of the rise and spread of
antibiotic-resistant bacteria through food and other pathways, thus
reducing the risk to Californians.

SEC. 2.  

It is the intent of the Legislature to enact legislation
that would address the overuse of antibiotics in livestock
production.