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posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday December 09 2015, @10:16PM   Printer-friendly
from the penicillin-addiction dept.

The UK-commissioned Review on Antimicrobial Resistance [PDF] has been released, and it contains findings and recommendations relating to antibiotic use and drug-resistant infections. The review recommends dramatically cutting the amount of antibiotics used in livestock:

The Review on Antimicrobial Resistance called for new targets on the amount of antibiotics used. The great threat of excessive antibiotics use in agriculture was highlighted in China last month. Scientists warned the world was on the cusp of the "post-antibiotic era" after discovering bacteria resistant to the antibiotic colistin - the medication used when all others have failed.

In some cases, antibiotics are used in agriculture to treat infections - but most are used prophylactically in healthy animals to prevent infection or, controversially, as a way of boosting weight gain. Using antibiotics as growth promoters was banned in the EU in 2006. Such uses are more common in intensive farming conditions.

Based on current rates, the global consumption of antibiotics is expected to increase by 67% by 2030. In the US alone, every year, 3,400 tonnes of antibiotics are used on patients, while 8,900 tonnes are used on animals. The economist who led the review, Jim O'Neill, said such figures were simply "staggering" and 10 million people would die each year from drug-resistant infections by 2050.

He said a reasonable target for agricultural antibiotic use would be 50mg for every 1kg of livestock - a level already achieved by one of the world's biggest pork exporters, Denmark. The UK uses just over 50mg/kg, the US uses nearly 200mg/kg, while Cyprus uses more than 400mg/kg.

Mr O'Neill told the BBC: "I'm sure many farmers will immediately think, 'Well, if we have to do this, that means the price goes up and I'll go out of business'. "The Danish example shows that, after a very initial transition cost, actually over the long term prices weren't affected and Denmark has continued to maintain its market share."

The report also warns of "superbugs" in under-cooked meat.


Editors Note: A link shortner had to be used on the first link due to a bug in the URL processor on the site that removes the %20 in hyperlinks.
The tinyurl used points to this link:
http://amr-review.org/sites/default/files/Antimicrobials%20in%20agriculture%20and%20the%20environment%20-%20Reducing%20unnecessary%20use%20and%20waste.pdf

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Wednesday December 09 2015, @11:56PM

    by frojack (1554) on Wednesday December 09 2015, @11:56PM (#274168) Journal

    The US is already on the road to imposing the same ban [psmag.com]. By this time next year farmers are going to have to get a veterinarian prescription for antibiotics, and the vet is going to have to certify there is a disease issue rather than a "Production" issue.

    It took years, but the major producers finally bought into this plan in 2014, as long as it covered all producers equally and no one was given a perceived advantage.

    It turns out that the antibiotics really have no significant production advantage. And wholesale meat prices wouldn't rise. There are already a lot of producers that do not use antibiotics. (And shout that in their advertising).

    it's a fact of biology that when healthy farm animals eat low doses of antibiotics, they often grow faster and gain more weight, without needing to actually eat more food.

    Or so we thought.....
    Recent studies have found antibiotics only make farm animals one to three percent heavier, an effect that's not even statistically significant.

    Even in the event of a complete ban on production-purpose antibiotics, wholesale meat prices would only rise by one percent, according to the report. [usda.gov] That's because the medicines don't make animals gain as much weight as previously thought, and because enough farms already eschew production-purpose antibiotics. Overall, the report's results suggest there's not a big economic cost to shifting away from feeding food animals antibiotics to fatten them.

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