Factory farming - Let off the hook

 Animal health experts and UN leaders have called for a significant reduction in antimicrobial drug usage in food animals, which is already causing a “silent pandemic”.

But other experts say the statement is “a real missed opportunity”, pointing to its failure to set reduction targets or even call for a ban on the use of antibiotics for animal growth promotion.

Antimicrobial drugs, which include antibiotics, antifungals and antiparasitics, are used in food production all over the world, the statement said, and are “administered to animals not only for veterinary purposes (to treat and prevent disease) but also to promote growth in healthy animals”. 

The enormous quantities of these used in animal production result in a far higher probability of drug-resistant bacteria and viruses emerging. This could lead to some of the world’s most important drugs becoming ineffective against common infectious diseases such as pneumonia, tuberculosis and gonorrhoea, with death rates rising. Drug-resistant diseases already cause at least 700,000 human deaths globally every year.

The World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) and the UN’s global leaders group on antimicrobial resistance called for “significant and urgent reduction in the amounts of antimicrobial drugs, including antibiotics, used in food systems” and said this was “critical to combating rising levels of drug resistance”.

According to the statement, “The world is rapidly heading towards a tipping point where the antimicrobials relied on to treat infections in humans, animals and plants will no longer be effective.”

Despite the statement’s strong wording, experts said it had few teeth.

Although commendable, the statement does not say “quantitatively what they mean by significant”  said Thomas Van Boeckel, an antimicrobial resistance, disease, and livestock production systems scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. “Basically what this call lacks is a clear target for reduction.”

“This statement is far too cautious and a real missed opportunity,” said Cóilín Nunan, a scientific adviser at the Alliance to Save our Antibiotics. “There is no target and not even a call for an immediate end to the use of antibiotics for livestock growth promotion.” He said, is how little the statement says about intensive farming. “Intensive farming, the root cause of so much animal disease and antibiotic use, is once again let off the hook. Where is the global leadership that is needed if we are ever to move to more sustainable farming practices and drastically cut farm antibiotic use?”

Henk Hobbelink, an agronomist and co-founder of the small-farmer focused NGO Grain, agreed and said the use of antimicrobial growth promoters in factory farming needed “to be banned, immediately and everywhere”.

UN criticised over statement on overuse of antibiotics in farming | Environment | The Guardian