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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Federal Proposal Aims to Save Antibiotics For the People

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Wednesday, March 18, 2009   

Washington D.C. - Make mine medium-rare, with...penicillin? Congress is questioning the use of antibiotic drugs in farm animals, and considering banning it. A new bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives would be even more restrictive than similar, current efforts in Minnesota.

Supporters of the practice are convinced that antibiotics help animals grow larger and stay healthier, increasing yields of meat and byproducts. However, studies show it also contributes to drug-resistant diseases in humans. Stuart Levy, a professor at Tufts University Medical School/em>, says new farming practices make the routine use of antibiotics in healthy animals obsolete.

"In the United States, we have instituted better ways of raising animals, so this practice is really not needed. It began in the 1950s - we're now in the year 2009."

A recent study by the Union of Concerned Scientists found 70 percent of all antibiotics in the United States are administered to healthy farm animals. As a precaution, the Minnesota Department of Agriculture already inspects animal feed and samples milk in attempts to reduce antibiotic use.

One sponsor of the legislation is New York Rep. Louise Slaughter, who says farmers must either cut antibiotic use, or the drugs will someday become useless to humans.

"We can't keep trying to find new treatments to keep out bacteria that we've allowed to grow so strong."

The bill lists seven classes of antibiotics, including penicillin and tetracycline, to be reserved mostly for use in treating human bacterial infections. Such legislation has been introduced before in Congress, however, and has failed in several previous attempts.




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