New Food and Drug Administration numbers reveal food animals consume the lion's share of antibiotics

A report on the Center for a Livable Future Web site details the overuse of antibiotics in the nation's factory farms.

"Antibiotics, one of the world’s greatest medical discoveries, are slowly losing their effectiveness," the report says, "in fighting bacterial infections and the massive use of the drugs in food animals may be the biggest culprit. The growing threat of antibiotic resistance is largely due to the misuse and overuse of antibiotics in both people and animals, which leads to an increase in 'super-bacteria.' However, people use a much smaller portion of antibiotics sold in this country compared to the amount set aside for food animals.

In fact, according to new data just released by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), of the antibiotics sold in 2009 for both people and food animals almost 80 percent were reserved for livestock and poultry. A huge portion of those antibiotics were never intended to fight bacterial infections, rather producers most likely administered them in continuous low-dosages through feed or water to increase the speed at which their animals grew. And that has many public health experts and scientists troubled."