Antibiotics in our meat

The suit filed on May 25, 2011, names the FDA; Margaret Hamburg, the Commissioner of the FDA; the Center for Veterinary Medicine, and its director, Bernadette Dunham; the United States Dept of Health and Human Services; and Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services.  The suit is calling on the FDA to fulfill its mission- as well as the other agencies and their leadership- to protect the public and to put an end to the non-therapeutic use of antibiotics.  A non-therapeutic dose is one that is too low to treat disease but high enough to promote resistance to the drug.  The result of drugging the animals is bigger and stronger bacteria; the subsequent impotence of those drugs; and the scourge of the resulting "superbugs."  Health care providers dispense these antibiotics to their human patients much more judiciously today so as to not compromise them, yet the CAFO's (confined animal feeding operations) who are not being regulated are adding penicillin and tetracyclines and other drugs to the feed of healthy cattle, pigs, and poultry destined for our tables, and it turns out NO ONE is regulating them!  The FDA is sitting on reports they've compiled and held ever since 1977 (their own research) that directly relate this antibiotic use in animals to increased risk in human populations.  And that's just the problem... they're sitting on it.  They haven't implemented anything.  They haven't regulated.  Ah but they've requested the industry to regulate themselves.  Imagine that!  The people who are supposed to protect our health are ASKING the industry endangering our health to play nice.  The farm industry doesn't see anything wrong with the way things are and they refuse to not only to stop the practice but even to divulge much information about what's going on.  I think it's called flying under the radar.  In 2008 Congress mandated the release of drug sale figures in animal agriculture but the meat and poultry industries and the drug makers responded that the public health would not be served were they to do so, and that animal health and food safety would compromised.  WHAT??  Isn't it the other way around?  It is estimated that between 70 and 80% of antibiotics used in this country are used for animals!  And it's not Fido and Fluffy who are ingesting all this... it's the feed lot animals that wind up on our tables.  The UCS (Union of Concerned Scientists) estimates that livestock get 24.6 million pounds of antibiotics per year.  But who really knows?  The FDA doesn't keep track because the industry won't give them the figures and the FDA just backs off.   This whole situation is all wrong.  Who's protecting the public health?  Whose job is it to protect the public health?  What is the purpose of the FDA?  Why are our tax dollars being spent on agencies and federal employees who have forgotten what their mission is?  This really aggravates me.  Our representation in Washington is obviously powerless to do anything, or they're not concerned.  Which is it?