The Senate Can Help Animals Get the Medicines They Need

COMMENTARY

By reauthorizing the Animal Drug User Fee Act, the House of Representatives has demonstrated that it recognizes the connection between animal health, human health, environmental health and economic growth. Now the Senate should do the same by voting to lock into place the policy platforms that enable the animal health industry and the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Veterinary Medicine to ensure a steady stream of innovative animal health therapies. 

Seventy percent of U.S households have pets, and the health and welfare of those animals directly affects humans. For example, owners of America’s 192 million dogs and cats must remain vigilant in their efforts to manage parasites like fleas and ticks, which can cause discomfort and disease in animals and also spread to humans. The continuous challenge of controlling parasites gets more difficult each season as climate change enables the geographic spread of pests and lengthens their breeding season.  

Companion animals aren’t the only ones requiring health innovations. The U.S. food supply is among the safest in the world, thanks to advanced medicines and diagnostic tools that identify, prevent, cure and even eradicate disease in food animals.

Approximately 1,004.6 billion food animals in this country produce critical nutrition such as poultry, eggs and beef. Keeping these animals healthy has a direct impact on individuals, families, communities, the economy and even the environment. Diseases like bovine tuberculosis and African swine fever can harm or kill livestock, which is bad for the animals, and can compromise our food supply. New technologies are critical to help the poultry industry reduce the risk of salmonella and campylobacter, which are the bacteria often responsible for human foodborne diseases.

Healthy animals also enable farmers to operate more efficiently, profitably and sustainably. Animals that struggle with disease require more resources. They may also fail to produce as much as if they had never fallen ill. For example, a dairy cow that receives medication to prevent an infection by parasitic roundworms produces more milk, which enables farmers to meet production needs with fewer animals.

Innovations in medicines, feed additives, diagnostics and husbandry can decrease the impact of livestock on land, water and air. According to a 2023 report by Oxford Analytica, reducing livestock disease by 10 percentage points globally is associated with an 800-million-ton decrease in greenhouse gas emissions. In Brazil, a vaccination rate of 80% in cattle is associated with a 26% reduction in livestock land use. And it’s estimated that every percentage point reduction in global beef cattle loss due to disease could provide enough additional production to meet the consumption needs of 317 million people.

Despite continuous innovation and investment in meaningful approaches to improving animal health, one in five animals in the global food chain is lost to preventable disease. This is not just bad for the animals, it’s a waste of natural resources. 

The ADUFA legislation currently before Congress would provide supplemental funding from the animal health industry to CVM to facilitate the expedited review of innovative animal health therapies. ADUFA must be reauthorized by Congress by Sept. 30 to avoid disruption. The House has acted, and now the Senate must take the final step and pass this legislation to improve the drug process and incentivize the development of therapies to address the unmet medical needs in animals. 

We urge the Senate to act early in September to reauthorize ADUFA so we can get to work with the FDA to implement these needed improvements to provide new and innovative therapies for animals.

Rachel Cumberbatch, DVM, is the vice president of regulatory and international affairs at Animal Health Institute. AHI can be found on Twitter @AnimalsHealthy.