New global guidelines may help governments take steps to prevent abuse of antibiotics in farming.
The World Health Organisation launched its proposals yesterday, calling for a halt in the use of antibiotics as a routine tool of farming.
They recommend that farmers and the food industry stop using antibiotics in healthy animals to boost growth and avoid disease.
"These guidelines aim to help preserve the effectiveness of antibiotics that are important for human medicine by reducing their use in animals," say the authors.
They add that overuse and misuse of antibiotics in animals and humans is contributing to the problem of antibiotic resistance.
"Some types of bacteria that cause serious infections in humans have already developed resistance to most or all of the available treatments, and there are very few promising new antibiotics in the research pipeline," they warn.
Currently the volume of antibiotics used in animals is continuing to increase around the world due to a growing demand for foods of animal origin such as meat, dairy, and eggs.
"These guidelines present evidence-based recommendations and best practice statements on use of medically important antimicrobials in food-producing animals, based on the World Health Organisation list of critically important antimicrobials for human medicine," they explain.
Some of its major recommendations are that use of medically important antibiotics for growth promotion and disease prevention should no longer be allowed, and that the subset of medically important antibiotics previously identified by the WHO as being ‘critically important for humans’ (fluoroquinolones, colistin, some cephalosporins, erythromycins) should be greatly restricted in terms of their use for treating or controlling disease in sick animals.
A policy briefing released alongside the guidelines covers WHO’s vision for how the recommendations can be implemented.
Leave a Reply