Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) sent a letter Tuesday to Secretaries Chuck Hagel, Tom Vilsack and Sylvia Burwell, co-chairs of the newly formed Interagency Task Force for Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria, to ask how this task force will address gaps in how the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is currently addressing the public health threat posed by the overuse of antibiotics in food animals.

“While the FDA’s policies are a step in the right direction, we are concerned that FDA may lack the authority to ensure veterinarians adhere to the criteria for determining an appropriate preventive use laid out in its guidance documents, that the FDA does not have a clear mechanism for collecting the data necessary to evaluate whether its policies effectively reduce the public health threat, and that the administration has no clear metrics or benchmarks that will be used to determine success or a need for future action,” the senators wrote.

In September, the White House released a report on antibiotic resistance by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) and issued an Executive Order establishing an interagency task force for combating antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The governmental task force must submit an action plan to the president by February 2015 describing how to meet the administration’s National Strategy on Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria and address PCAST’s recommendations.