Earlier this month, U.S. pediatricians warned that the overuse of antibiotics in animal feed is making it harder for doctors to treat infections in young children. It’s a real problem, agrees a Canadian microbiologist, but changes are coming.
Medical experts from several fields have been raising the alarm for some time about antibiotic resistance, noting that agricultural practices are contributing to the problem.
When healthy animals are routinely given antibiotics, it leads to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the animal, which are then spread to other animals, and eventually to humans.
That’s making the drugs that doctors routinely rely on ineffective in treating potentially-serious infections in children.
Dr. John Prescott, a professor emeritus at Guelph University’s pathobiology department, says farmers use antibiotics in their animals for three reasons:
- to treat bacterial infections
- to prevent infections
- and for the promotion of growth
“This has been a very long-standing practice in animal agricultural production,” he told CTV’s Canada AM Friday from Guelph, Ont.
Dr. Prescott says Europe has already banned the use of antibiotics for growth promotion, and much of North America will soon follow suit.
“Growth promotion use in food animals in North America is going to come to an end by December, 2016,” he said.
Health Canada has given food animal producers until that date to end the use of medically important antibiotics for growth promotion.
That will bring Canada in line with regulations coming into place in the U.S., where the FDA is requiring farmers to eliminate the use of antibiotics for “sub-therapeutic use,” such as growth promotion. As well, farmers wanting to give their animals antibiotics to treat or control specific disease will need a prescription from a veterinarian.
“One of the issues has been that farmers can use antibiotics in feed without a veterinarian prescription. That’s going to be changing by December, 2016,” Prescott said.
“So this is a good news story,” he added. “People have been calling for these changes – the removal of growth promotional antibiotics – for a very long time. And so I think it’s actually an exciting development.”
Part of the federal government’s action plan on antibiotics in food animals will be a monitoring program to see how much antibiotics Canadian farmers use and how we compare to other countries.
Dr. Prescott says he expects that process to be eye-opening.
“I think farmers would say they don’t overuse antibiotics, but I think there is overuse, particularly in disease prevention in some species,” he said.
Finally, Dr. Prescott notes it’s important to note there are no antibiotics in the meat we consume in Canada. What there can be, though, are antibiotic-resistant bacteria in that meat. But fully cooking the meat should kill those pathogens.
“Cooking will kill all bacteria,” he said. “So that’s something everybody can do: make sure you cook your meat properly.”
