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Tell Congress to Support the Antibiotic Preservation Bill
  1. Signatures
    410 out of 500
    Petitioning
    1. The U.S. Senate (+ 1 other)
      Petitioning
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      • The U.S. Senate
      • The U.S. House of Representatives
  2. Created By
    Kristen Ridley
    Pasadena, CA
About this Petition Petition Letter Petition Updates

For decades now, factory farmers have relied on antibiotics to speed the growth of their animals and to keep them alive in filthy, crowded conditions. As a result 80 percent of our antibiotics now go to these animals unnecessarily, and antibiotic-resistant bacteria are springing up all over the place.  One particularly dangerous strain known as MRSA kills over 18,000 people each year in the United States. This is a deadly serious problem.

Rep. Louise Slaughter has reintroduced a bill that would regulate this antibiotic abuse. Rightly called the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (HR 965), it would halt the non-therapeutic use of 7 classes of antibiotics, preservig their effectiveness for us and future generations.

As Rep. Slaughter put it, "Unless we act now, we will unwittingly be permitting animals to serve as incubators for resistant bacteria." Please sign the petition in support of this life-saving bill!

Photo: Casey Fleser

Why People Are Signing
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Support the Antibiotic Preservation Bill HR 965

Greetings,

I am writing to urge you to support the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (HR 965). Antibiotics are one of the most crucial public health tools we possess, but their effectiveness is being seriously threatened.

For decades now, large, industrial farms have made it common practice to feed continual doses of antibiotics to their entire herds or flocks. This is not for any medically sound reason but simply to promote growth and prevent the diseases that spring up in poorly-managed, dirty, and overcrowded conditions. The price we pay for this drug abuse is the rampant spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. One particularly dangerous strain, known as MRSA, kills over 18,000 people each year in the United States. This is a deadly serious problem, and as thing stand, it only looks to get worse.

It is crucial that we stop the needless wasting of antibiotic effectiveness. By allowing 80 percent of all our bacteria to go into these farms, we are signing a death warrant for hundreds of thousands of future patients whose lives could have been easily saved were it not for our squandering of this monumentally important medical tool. Please do everything you can to protect the effectiveness of antibiotics for human health.

[Your name]

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