According to the World Health Organization, the widespread use if antimicrobials in food animal production is cause for concern regarding public health. Antimicrobials are used for mass treatment against infectious diseases or continuously in feed at very low doses (parts per million) for growth promotion, particularly in pig and poultry production.
Antimicrobials are used to improve feed conversion and reduce waste product output from intensive livestock production. Because of the density and confinement of the animals in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) there is great risk for communicable diseases to pass quickly between the animals. The vast number of animals, and the rivers of waste they produce and remain exposed to, diminishes their resistance to sickness posing yet another threat to the humans and animals that eat them.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced recently they are going to protect an important class of antimicrobial drugs for treating human illness by prohibiting certain uses in food-producing animals. Specifically, “extralabel” or unapproved uses of the cephalosporin class of antimicrobial drugs in cattle, swine, chickens and turkeys will be prohibited; effective April 5, 2012.
Here are a few reasons the new order falls short of true protection:
- The cephalosporin class is merely a fraction of the antimicrobials used in the process of producing animals for food; prohibiting its use will have little overall effect.
- Not effected by the new order are minor species of food-producing animals such as ducks or rabbits.
- Finally, “Veterinarians may also use or prescribe cephalosporins for extralabel uses”.
I’m banking producers in the food-animal industry will have very little trouble finding a veterinarian to help them if they can’t work around the very soft “prohibitions”.