20 FEBRUARY 2003
Recommendations for the future use of veterinary drugs have been given a cautious welcome by the Soil Association.
Following the publication of the Veterinary Products Committee’s first report on antimicrobial resistance, Richard Young, antibiotics advisor for the Soil Association said:
“We welcome the report and several of its recommendations, particularly that all antimicrobials should become prescription only medicines and that that all coccidiostats should be licensed as veterinary medicines rather than under feed additives legislation.
“However, the VPC continues to promote the use of antimicrobials for preventing as well as treating disease. The Soil Association believes that the routine prophylactic use of antimicrobials drugs should be prohibited, since this is the principal cause of persistent antimicrobial resistance. Until the regulators face up to this fundamental weakness everything else is simply tinkering round the edges.
“Under Soil Association standards, the routine use of such drugs is not allowed. Good animal health is achieved through a number of measures including lower stocking densities and careful management”
The Soil Association has made the following statements concerning the report:
· We welcome the proposal for ‘more stringent’ licensing and ‘special consideration’ for antimicrobials essential for the treatment of serious life-threatening disease in humans where there are no alternatives in human medicine.
· The use of veterinary medicines is the principle source of resistant genes for most of the food-borne pathogens where resistance has been shown to pass from animals to humans. For drug resistant infections caused by salmonella, campylobacter and E.coli, the use of veterinary medicines is far more significant than the use of medicines in humans.
· We welcome the recommendation that ‘the potential for development of cross-resistance in veterinary pathogens associated with the use of growth enhancers with antimicrobial activity needs to be considered’. However, all licensed ‘growth promoting’ antibiotics are to be phased out in the EU by 2006 and the VPC should extend its concerns to include the routine use of licensed ‘therapeutic’ antibiotics such as the tetracylines, penicillins and macrolides which are known to have a growth promoting effect.
· Most importantly, the VPC should also as a matter of urgency review the phenomenon of co-selection whereby the use of certain antibiotics can select for resistance to unrelated drugs. Recent research has identified this as a likely cause of continuing Vancomycin resistance in farm animal pathogens capable of transferring to humans.
· We welcome the VPC’s call for a ‘robust system for accounting and audit of active ingredient, formulation, tonnage (relative potency) concentration, usage and target species’. At present, data gathered by government on the use of antibiotics in farm animals is insufficiently detailed to be of benefit for the development of policy in this area, because it is not known how much of each drug is used in each species of livestock. The Soil Association hopes the VPC will take a strong stand on this and call for the necessary additional resources to be made available.
· We agree with the Veterinary Medicines Directorate’s comments on the number of bacterial species that should be included in surveillance programmes. The four species recommended by the VPC - salmonella, campylobacter, E.coli and Enterococcus faecium - are the most significant. However there is potential for resistance to transfer from animals to humans on several other bacterial species and these should be included as well.
Note for editors
The Veterinary Products Committee is an independent advisory committee whose members are appointed by ministers. It is the principal committee authorising the use of antimicrobials and other veterinary drugs
The Veterinary Medicines Directorate is an executive agency of DEFRA responsible for the licensing of veterinary drugs and the surveillance of drug residues in food. It provides the secretariat for the Veterinary Products Committee
top
More links
Search library with term animal health
Search rest of website with term animal health
top
Library documents in Animal health category
( : archived document) |