Veterinarian warns producers that over-prescribing could lead to regulation
Antibiotics could be taken away from livestock producers if they aren’t treated more responsibly, warns a Saskatchewan veterinarian and expert in antibiotic use.
The danger isn’t just losing specific uses of some drugs but having those drugs entirely removed from livestock production.
“We cannot afford to let this get worse,” Leigh Rosengren of Rosengren Epidemiology Consulting in Midale, Sask., told the Manitoba Swine Seminar Feb. 5.
She urged the livestock industry to voluntarily reduce some antibiotic practices to avoid the imposition of regulations, or worse.
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No new substantial antibiotics are likely in coming years, and those being developed now by pharmaceutical companies will probably not be allowed on farms.
“What we’re hearing is that the writing is on the wall,” said Rosengren.
“It is incredibly expensive to develop new molecules, and when they come they will be going to human medicine, and we probably will not see truly novel molecules coming to agriculture to solve this problem for us.”
It means farmers will be relying on existing antibiotics for future health protection and disease treatment, Rosengren said. Farmers will find animal health management more challenging if any of those antibiotics are lost.
Rosengren said Canada has looser regulations than most similar countries about some uses of antibiotics, such as “extra label” use and growth promotion use.
However, she said producers shouldn’t think that makes non-essential uses acceptable. Farmers can’t afford to seem uncaring with so much concern about antibiotic resistance endangering human health.
“I would be encouraging you to have the conversation with your feed mill and with your nutritionist and with your veterinarian on how your feed meds are going to change because I promise you if we see no change, this will be a big black stripe across the industry because when we say we’re going to step up and we’re voluntarily going to clean something up, if we ultimately don’t change, I say the next step is regulation,” said Rosengren.
Old standby antibiotics such as tetracycline are already ineffective with many bacteria that live within hogs. As a result, livestock producers can’t afford to lose access to the ones that can still control disease-causing microbes.
She said losing access to these drugs would be devastating.
U.S. poultry producers voluntarily stopped using ceftiofur for disease prevention when resistance started showing up in Canadian egg production, and similar moves are occurring in Canada. That kind of self-restraint will be needed to prevent health authorities from taking tougher action.
Rosengren said that is already happening, noting the Veterinary Drug Directorate is likely to restrict off-label use soon.
“It does seem like we will see action on all water-soluble antimicrobials going prescription-only in the near future,” she said.
