By Ir. Bart
Molenaers, Scientific director at Mercordi animal care, Belgium
The new report of the world Organisation for animal
health (OIE) shows positive global progress on the monitoring and regulations
of antimicrobial use in animals. The amount of countries to collect data on the
use of antimicrobials in animals has increased again in this new data
collection round.
Since a couple
of years, the OIE has developed a voluntary data collection system to monitor
the use of antimicrobial agents in animals. The report of the OIE shows data
from 2015 till 2017. A record of 155 countries voluntary participated in it.
Figure: the number of countries
participating on the OIE Data collection of antimicrobial use in Animals from
2015-2017. Not only the total participation increased, also the number of
countries participating with quantitative data.
These data
clearly show an increasing international awareness of the dangers in using
antimicrobials as growth promotors in animal feed. The number of countries
using antimicrobials for growth promotion has declined from 60 to 45 countries
since 2016, states the report. Also, the number of countries without regulatory
framework on the use of growth promotors have decreased from 110 to 72.
However, key
antimicrobials, classified by the world health organisation as ‘highest
priority critically important antimicrobials’, including colistin, continue to
be used routinely in several regions for this purpose. Of the 45 countries
using antimicrobials, 30 countries also provided the amount and name of the
antimircrobials used for growth promotion.
Figure: Antimicrobial agents used for growth promotion in animals in 30
countries in 2017. Important
antimicrobials as colistin are still widely used.
The use of
antibiotics to promote growth in healthy animals has been banned in the
European Union since 2006 and in the United States since 2017 because it fuels
the development of dangerous drug-resistant microbial infections in humans. The
OIE report states that of the 45 countries reporting continued antibiotic use
for growth promotion, 18 are in the Americas, 14 in Asia and Oceania and 10 in
Africa. Hopefully the positive evolution stated in this report will grow
further on and lead to a worldwide ban on the use of antimicrobial growth
promoters ( AGPs).
Source:
World organisation for animal health ( OIE,
2018). OIe annual report on antimicrobial agents intended for use in animals
Poultry breast image: zootechnica
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