Woo-hoo, it's new!

And coming this spring to a feedlot near you! We love to drone on about antibiotic (over)use in animal agribusiness, bacterial resistance, and the emerging threat to global public health.

Instead of doing it again, we’ll just give you some quick take-aways from today’s Washington Post article:

InterVet developed cefquinome to treat bovine respiratory disease, the most common disease in cattle. Recognizing the potential public health implications of using a close cousin of cefepime in animals, the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine, which oversees animal drug approvals, convened its expert advisers in September.

And what did they discover about BRD and current treatments? Available and effective. But…

The panel also learned that the disease would be a relatively minor issue but for the stressful conditions under which U.S. cattle are raised, including high-density living spaces and routine shipment on crowded trains for hundreds or thousands of miles. Those "production dynamics" suppress the animals' immune systems, explained feedlot consultant Kelly Lechtenberg of Oakland, Neb., and virtually guarantee that bovine respiratory disease will be a major problem.

Why aren’t a dozen effective antibiotic therapies for BRD enough? According to the VP of Scientific and Regulatory Affairs for the Animal Health Institute, it doesn’t matter how many there are.

Why are cows always and inevitably sick?

More to the point: why does the FDA have to wait for a person to be sickened by a resistant microbe in order to tell animal agribusiness to stop shoveling, dripping, and injecting antibiotics into their products?