This is not chicken feed

Poultry prescriptions: Humans vulnerable to drug-resistant germs from antibiotics fed to livestock.

SICK CHICKS or sick people?

The livestock industry's massive use of antibiotics has apparently led to strains of bacteria that are resistant to those wonder drugs. And that puts humans increasingly at risk from food-borne infection.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration a month ago finally took action by banning two antibiotics widely used by poultry growers since 1995.

The same family of drugs (fluoroquinolones) used to combat food poisoning in humans has shown a dramatic loss of effectiveness in that short period.

It's the first time the FDA has withdrawn approval for a livestock antibiotic. Animals use 40 percent of antibiotics taken in the United States, more to promote growth than treat sickness.

Overuse of antibiotics, unlike lots of other drugs, causes them to lose their strength as the bacteria mutate and develop resistance.

When harmful bacteria are passed from animals to humans, the danger of drug resistance in treating humans is elevated. Research linked the chicken antibiotics banned by the FDA to development of resistant bacteria strains affecting humans.

The World Health Organization recommended three years ago that human medical antibiotics not be fed to livestock to promote growth. Europe adopted that standard, but the United States has balked.

Nonetheless, the FDA ban on poultry antibiotics is a sensible step in fighting antibiotic resistance.

There is no need to play chicken with human health.