HARRISBURG — State Rep. Daylin Leach, D-Montgomery, unveiled legislation Tuesday that would limit the use of antibiotics in healthy farm animals in Pennsylvania if those same drugs are also used to treat infectious diseases in humans.

At a Capitol news conference, Leach explained that bacterial infections are becoming increasingly resistant to treatment with antibiotics, and a major factor behind the increased resistance is the routine feeding of low levels of antibiotics to livestock and poultry.

"We use antibiotics to cure the most mundane and treatable illnesses, but when we also use them to beef up livestock, it's a prescription for disaster," Leach said. "Chickens, cows and pigs gain weight faster when antibiotics are added to their feed, and the agriculture industry is using this technique to garner higher profits without regard to long-term medical complications."

Leach's proposed Safe Foods, Safe Families Act would specifically ban the use of penicillin, tetracycline, erythromycin, bacitracin and other antibiotics in healthy farm animals. The Pennsylvania secretary of health would be authorized to prohibit the non-therapeutic use of other antibiotics. Sick animals could still receive treatment with antibiotics.

"Animals should not be fed antibiotics simply to enhance their growth or compensate for crowded conditions," Leach said."The practice undermines legitimate medicine and threatens the well-being of young children, seniors and people with compromised immune systems such as cancer, transplant and AIDS patients."

Leach noted that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control has declared antibiotic resistance to be one of its top concerns, yet an estimated 60 to 70 percent of all antibiotics used in the U.S. are given to healthy animals.

At the federal level, more than 350 health, consumer, environmental, sustainable agriculture and other public interest organizations have called for an end to the routine use of medically important antibiotics as feed additives.

These include the American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Public Health Association, National Association of County and City Health Officials, and the American College of Preventive Medicine. The European Union has already banned this practice.

More information may be found on the Keep Antibiotics Working Web site at www.keepantibioticsworking.org.

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