Or at least that is what the headline for AgriPulse said. Food Safety News changed the title a bit with “Antibiotics Sales to Farms up 23 Percent Since 2009.” And there were many more stories on the subject at the time.

Technically, the titles are correct with the exception that the FDA report states quite clearly that sales represent “product being sold to various outlets from the manufacturer, not the volume of product being sold by the outlets to patients.”

In other words, these are not “Sales to Farms” as FSN claimed. In fact, these antibiotics are also sold to pet owners for use in their homes by their companion animals.

It is true that sales have risen from 2009 to 2014, the years cited by AgriPulse. But nowhere is there mention of any change in size of our herds and flocks.

The increase is mostly in the ionophore and tetracycline classes of antibiotics, both climbing by approximately 25 percent in the last six years (2009 was the first year FDA gathered such data). Ionophores have never been approved for use in humans. BTW, ionophores are also sold to de-worm your dogs.

Tetracyclines are very rarely used in human medicine any more, sales representing less than 4 percent of all human antibiotic sales. Tetracyclines make up 70 percent of the medically important antibiotics sold for use in animals.

Probably most important, is looking at the sales for use in animal trends of the most commonly prescribed antibiotics used in human medicine.

The top five classes of antibiotics used in human medicine comprise 88 percent of all prescriptions and hospital orders. They are, in decreasing order:

Penicillin (ex. Augmentin)
Cephalosporin (Keflex)
Sulfa (Bactrim)
Fluoroquinolone (Cipro), and
Macrolides (Z-Pak)

Two of the top five, cephalosporins and fluoroquinolones, have very strict FDA limitations for use in animals raised for food.

These two drugs combined, according to the cited FDA report, in 2014 accounted for less than 0.2 percent of all medically important antibiotics sold for use in animals. But these two classes do represent 25 percent of all human antibiotic sales.Their sales are definitely down over the last decade or so. Big time.

My main interest was looking at numbers 1, 3 and 5, the penicillins, sulfas and macrolides.

Compared to 2009, penicillin and macrolide sales are up, but not the 23 percent touted in one headline. That number includes ionophores and tetracyclines.

Sulfa sales have actually dropped by 10 percent.

The FDA and the animal ag industry began serious discussions about federal Guidance 209 and 213 along with the Veterinary Feed Directive in 2011-2012. So I looked back at 2012 sales as a good point in time when things might have begun to change, and change they did indeed.

Penicillin sales from 2012 to 2014 dropped by about 8 percent. Sulfa sales also dropped by approximately 8 percent in the same time frame. Macrolide sales dropped 9 percent from 2012 to 2013, but then rose back in 2014 to the same level as 2012.

To put it simply, when I was practicing medicine nearly 100 percent of my prescriptions fell into the top five classes, and it does appear that the trend for those antibiotics used in animal health is going the right direction.

Hey, AHI (Animal Health Institute), NIAA (National Institute for Animal Agriculture) and AAA (Animal Agriculture Alliance), why no good headlines setting the record straight?

“FDA report shows antibiotic sales on the rise”

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