The antibiotic resistance that is developing globally in disease-causing bacteria is one of the major threats to human medicine. It leads to additional burdens on health systems, to treatment failures and, in the worst cases, to untreatable infections or infections treated too late to save life. Although the over-use of antibiotics in human medicine is the major cause of the current crisis of antibiotic resistance, public-health experts are agreed that the over-use and mis-use of antibiotics in intensive animal production is also an important factor – around half of the world’s antibiotic production is used in farm animals. Infectious disease is encouraged by the crowded and stressful conditions in which animals live in factory farms. It is common in the UK and the European Union for animals such as pigs and poultry to be fed antibiotics in their feed and water, not to cure disease (therapeutic use) but to suppress infections that are likely to arise in factory farm conditions (non-therapeutic or preventive use). When animals are administered an antibiotic that is closely related to an antibiotic used in human medicine, cross-resistance occurs and disease-causing bacteria become resistant to the drug used in human medicine. The consensus of the world’s veterinary and medical experts is that it is dangerous and unjustifiable to use antibiotics that are related to drugs of critical importance in human medicine for ‘preventive’ administration to groups of apparently healthy animals.
Author/Organization: Compassion in World Farming (CIWF)
Year: 2011
Topics: animal health, animal production, farming, human health, livestock, public health, veterinary drugs
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