Antibiotic use in livestock
The use of antibiotics in the husbandry of livestock includes treatment when ill (therapeutic), treatment of a group of animals when at least one is diagnosed with clinical infection (metaphylaxis[1]), and preventative treatment (prophylaxis). Antibiotics are an important tool to treat animal as well as human disease, safeguard animal health and welfare, and support food safety.[2] However, used irresponsibly, this may lead to antibiotic resistance which may impact human, animal and environmental health.[3][4][5][6]
While levels of use vary dramatically from country to country, for example some Northern European countries use very low quantities to treat animals compared with humans,[7][8] worldwide an estimated 73% of antimicrobials (mainly antibiotics) are consumed by farm animals.[9] Furthermore, a 2015 study also estimates that global agricultural antibiotic usage will increase by 67% from 2010 to 2030, mainly from increases in use in developing BRIC countries.[10]
Increased antibiotic use is a matter of concern as antibiotic resistance is considered to be a serious threat to human and animal welfare in the future, and growing levels of antibiotics or antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the environment could increase the numbers of drug-resistant infections in both.[11] Bacterial diseases are a leading cause of death and a future without effective antibiotics would fundamentally change the way modern human as well as veterinary medicine is practised.[11][12][13]
Legislation and other curbs on antibiotic use in farm animals are now being introduced across the globe.[14][15][16] In 2017, the World Health Organization strongly suggested reducing antibiotic use in animals used in the food industry.[17] The use of antibiotics for growth promotion purposes was banned in the European Union from 2006,[18] and the use of sub-therapeutic doses of medically important antibiotics in animal feed and water[19] to promote growth and improve feed efficiency became illegal in the United States on 1 January 2017, through regulatory change enacted by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which sought voluntary compliance from drug manufacturers to re-label their antibiotics.[20][21]
- ^ Bousquet-Melou, Alain; Ferran, Aude; Toutain, Pierre-Louis (May 2010). "Prophylaxis & Metaphylaxis in Veterinary Antimicrobial Therapy". Conference: 5th International Conference on Antimicrobial Agents in Veterinary Medicine (AAVM)At: Tel Aviv, Israel – via ResearchGate.
- ^ British Veterinary Association, London (May 2019). "BVA policy position on the responsible use of antimicrobials in food producing animals" (PDF). Retrieved 22 March 2020.
- ^ Massé, Daniel; Saady, Noori; Gilbert, Yan (4 April 2014). "Potential of Biological Processes to Eliminate Antibiotics in Livestock Manure: An Overview". Animals. 4 (2): 146–163. doi:10.3390/ani4020146. PMC 4494381. PMID 26480034. S2CID 1312176.
- ^ Sarmah, Ajit K.; Meyer, Michael T.; Boxall, Alistair B. A. (1 October 2006). "A global perspective on the use, sales, exposure pathways, occurrence, fate and effects of veterinary antibiotics (VAs) in the environment". Chemosphere. 65 (5): 725–759. Bibcode:2006Chmsp..65..725S. doi:10.1016/j.chemosphere.2006.03.026. PMID 16677683.
- ^ Kumar, Kuldip; C. Gupta, Satish; Chander, Yogesh; Singh, Ashok K. (1 January 2005). "Antibiotic Use in Agriculture and Its Impact on the Terrestrial Environment". Advances in Agronomy. 87: 1–54. doi:10.1016/S0065-2113(05)87001-4. ISBN 9780120007851.
- ^ Boeckel, Thomas P. Van; Glennon, Emma E.; Chen, Dora; Gilbert, Marius; Robinson, Timothy P.; Grenfell, Bryan T.; Levin, Simon A.; Bonhoeffer, Sebastian; Laxminarayan, Ramanan (29 September 2017). "Reducing antimicrobial use in food animals". Science. 357 (6358): 1350–1352. Bibcode:2017Sci...357.1350V. doi:10.1126/science.aao1495. PMC 6510296. PMID 28963240. S2CID 206662316.
- ^ ESVAC (European Medicines Agency) (October 2019). "Sales of veterinary antimicrobial agents in 31 European countries in 2017: Trends from 2010 to 2017" (PDF). Retrieved 22 March 2020.
- ^ Torrella, Kenny (8 January 2023). "Big Meat just can't quit antibiotics". Vox. Retrieved 23 January 2023.
- ^ Boeckel, Thomas P. Van; Pires, João; Silvester, Reshma; Zhao, Cheng; Song, Julia; Criscuolo, Nicola G.; Gilbert, Marius; Bonhoeffer, Sebastian; Laxminarayan, Ramanan (20 September 2019). "Global trends in antimicrobial resistance in animals in low- and middle-income countries" (PDF). Science. 365 (6459): eaaw1944. doi:10.1126/science.aaw1944. hdl:2013/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/296867. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 31604207. S2CID 202699175.
- ^ Van Boeckel, Thomas P.; Brower, Charles; Gilbert, Marius; Grenfell, Bryan T.; Levin, Simon A.; Robinson, Timothy P.; Teillant, Aude; Laxminarayan, Ramanan (2015). "Global trends in antimicrobial use in food animals". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 112 (18): 5649–5654. Bibcode:2015PNAS..112.5649V. doi:10.1073/pnas.1503141112. PMC 4426470. PMID 25792457. S2CID 3861749.
- ^ a b Bush, Karen; Courvalin, Patrice; Dantas, Gautam; Davies, Julian; Eisenstein, Barry; Huovinen, Pentti; Jacoby, George A.; Kishony, Roy; Kreiswirth, Barry N.; Kutter, Elizabeth; Lerner, Stephen A.; Levy, Stuart; Lewis, Kim; Lomovskaya, Olga; Miller, Jeffrey H.; Mobashery, Shahriar; Piddock, Laura J. V.; Projan, Steven; Thomas, Christopher M.; Tomasz, Alexander; Tulkens, Paul M.; Walsh, Timothy R.; Watson, James D.; Witkowski, Jan; Witte, Wolfgang; Wright, Gerry; Yeh, Pamela; Zgurskaya, Helen I. (2 November 2011). "Tackling antibiotic resistance". Nature Reviews Microbiology. 9 (12): 894–896. doi:10.1038/nrmicro2693. PMC 4206945. PMID 22048738. S2CID 4048235.
- ^ Tang, Karen L; Caffrey, Niamh P; Nóbrega, Diego; Cork, Susan C; Ronksley, Paul C; Barkema, Herman W; Polachek, Alicia J; Ganshorn, Heather; Sharma, Nishan; Kellner, James D; Ghali, William A (November 2017). "Restricting the use of antibiotics in food-producing animals and its associations with antibiotic resistance in food-producing animals and human beings: a systematic review and meta-analysis". The Lancet Planetary Health. 1 (8): e316 – e327. doi:10.1016/S2542-5196(17)30141-9. PMC 5785333. PMID 29387833.
- ^ Shallcross, Laura J.; Howard, Simon J.; Fowler, Tom; Davies, Sally C. (5 June 2015). "Tackling the threat of antimicrobial resistance: from policy to sustainable action". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 370 (1670): 20140082. doi:10.1098/rstb.2014.0082. PMC 4424432. PMID 25918440. S2CID 39361030.
- ^ European Medicines Agency (4 September 2019). "Implementation of the new Veterinary Medicines Regulation in the EU".
- ^ OECD, Paris (May 2019). "Working Party on Agricultural Policies and Markets: Antibiotic Use and Antibiotic Resistance in Food Producing Animals in China". Retrieved 22 March 2020.
- ^ US Food & Drug Administration (July 2019). "Timeline of FDA Action on Antimicrobial Resistance". Food and Drug Administration. Retrieved 22 March 2020.
- ^ "WHO guidelines on use of medically important antimicrobials in food-producing animals" (PDF).
- ^ European Commission, Brussels (December 2005). "Ban on antibiotics as growth promoters in animal feed enters into effect".
- ^ "The Judicious Use of Medically Important Antimicrobial Drugs in Food-Producing Animals" (PDF). Guidance for Industry (#209). 2012. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 July 2010.
- ^ "Veterinary Feed Directive (VFD) Basics". AVMA. Archived from the original on 15 April 2017. Retrieved 14 March 2017.
- ^ University of Nebraska, Lincoln (October 2015). "Veterinary Feed Directive Questions and Answers". UNL Beef. Retrieved 14 March 2017.