Sign the Petition - Stop the Overuse of Antibiotics in Food Animals

From the Center for Science in the Pubic Interest:

The modern miracle of antibiotics, and by extension the health of all Americans, is under attack. 

Overuse and misuse of antibiotics in animal production is leading to the growth of resistant bacteria that can spread throughout the environment.  Nearly 80 percent of antibiotics used in the U.S. go to animal agriculture--and most of these drugs are fed to healthy animals to make them grow faster and prevent infection, not to treat disease.  Decades of research has shown that regular dosing of healthy food animals with sub-therapeutic antibiotics, many of them also used in human medicine, is a major reason for the rise in drug-resistant bacteria.  This practice contributes to the growth of antibiotic-resistant "super bugs," making it harder and more expensive to treat common bacterial infections.

The Food and Drug Administration’s reliance on pharmaceutical companies and industrial agriculture to voluntarily stop the use of antibiotics is inadequate to protect the public.  To squander these life-saving drugs on healthy animals is irresponsible.  We don’t wastefully sprinkle antibiotics on our children's cereal every morning to increase their growth--why should we allow food-animal factories to do the same with animal feed?

The Center for Science in the Public Interest has joined with other consumer protection organizations to create a ‘We the People’ petition on the official WhiteHouse.gov web site urging the Obama Administration to end antibiotic overuse in food-animal production. 
Please make your voice heard by signing this petition by March 16, 2012.

Sincerely,

Cindy Roberts
Food Safety Research Associate