SAN ANTONIO, Texas – The fear of more antibiotic resistant bugs affecting sick people could curtail the use of common livestock medications in the United States.
Individual states and the U.S. Congress are examining the issue, so it is important legislators get educated on how drugs are used on the farm, said Bernadette Dunham, director of the Centre for Veterinary Medicine at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Most consumers are not concerned if sick animals are treated but they do not understand how much medication is used or why it is added to feed for prophylactic use, she said at the health and animal well-being committee of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association in San Antonio Jan. 29.
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A problem could be labelling on common antimicrobials, which states the products are for growth promotion and feed efficiency.
Her department plans to work with drug companies to have labels say what diseases are cured with this medication rather than see them delisted.
“The other way could be that there will be legislation that will come down,” she said.
“We need to make sure we have the drugs that will treat, control and prevent disease. We want to make sure the drugs used in animals or humans work.”
The FDA has set up a national antimicrobial resistance monitoring system where meat samples are collected and checked for pathogens and potential drug resistance.
The results can be found at www.fda/gov/narms.pg.html.
The proposed bill in question was introduced in the spring of 2009.
The Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act amends the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to withdraw antibiotics used for human health from use in agriculture unless animals or herds have a disease.
The medicines include feed and water uses of penicillin, tetracycline, macrolide, lincosamide, streptogramin, which is also called virginiamycin, aminoglycoside, also known as neomycin and sulfonamide.
Ionophores like monensin or Gainpro are not are included in the bill.
Controversy over the links between animal and human health medications has been raised throughout the world. Antimicrobial resistance to a deadly form of salmonella was studied at the University of Glasgow School of Veterinary Medicine.
“If you look at veterinary impacts, perhaps antimicrobial resistance is the one that sits right at the centre of this because we do have issues in food and issues of controlling health in animals and humans,” said Stuart Reid, the school’s dean.
His school recently studied antimicrobial resistance to a deadly form of salmonella where sick people and animals were tracked. No sound connection was made between drugs used for animals and resistance showing up in human medicine, he said.
It isolated salmonella DT104 from cattle to learn whether the resistant strains seen in humans and animals came from a common ancestry. It also wanted to know where resistance started and found cases in people five years before it was identified in animals. Resistance to medication also seemed more common in humans.
The disease showed a distinct difference between the strain of salmonella found in humans compared to infected animals. They also found once it hits, the disease symptoms were different among humans than cases seen in animals. .
Surveillance is ongoing to monitor the potential resistance problem, but Reid said many agencies are guilty of collecting data without knowing what they will do with it.
The current data is not adequate to answer whether resistance is crossing over.
Salmonella, campylobacter and rotovirus resistance to antibiotics is a natural phenomenon and there are many sources of resistance besides use of drugs in animal health. He advises prudent use of antimicrobials.
“We know that using antimicrobials leads to resistance,” he said.
“But one of the things we need to ensure is asking the question, where is the resistance arising, how is it being transmitted and then we can talk more in an informed fashion about control and intervention.”
