The Ontario Medical Association has issued a policy
statement calling for a ban on non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in livestock
and poultry farming.
The association says there is a crisis of antibiotic
resistance and that’s why it’s calling for the ban.
Farm leaders are begging for more time to demonstrate that
responsible use of antibiotics is the better choice.
That includes the Ontario Veterinary Medicine Association
and spokesmen for commodity groups such as pork and milk marketing boards.
The veterinarians do agree with the medical doctors that the
door on imports by farmers for their own use ought to be slammed shut.
That’s an issue that has drawn long-term criticism from the
Canadian Animal Health Association which speaks for Canadian manufacturers,
distributors and marketers of livestock and poultry medicines.
The medical doctors want regulations requiring a veterinary
prescription for any use of antibiotics on farms.
There are other countries, most notably Europe, where bans
on the non-therapeutic use of antibiotics have gone into effect.
The experience there has been a short-term increase in
disease and infection challenges on farms that required an increase in the
therapeutic prescription use of antibiotics, followed by changes in management
that bought animal and poultry health back to normal.
Dr.
Doug Weir, president of the Ontario Medical Association, said Canada is lagging
other countries, including the United States where authorities recently added
cephalosporins as a class of antibiotics that can no longer be used by farmers
as growth promotants.
That
class remains on the market for Canadian farm use.
Weir
said Canadians do not appear to understand that if antibiotic use isn't curbed,
the world faces a future in which some infections will be incurable.
"This
is a serious problem. We have to take serious action," Weir says.
My recommendation is that farmers be allowed the continued non-therapeutic use of antibiotics, but only after they demonstrate that they provide the intended growth-performance-enhancing results.
That would require an on-the-farm trial every so often, such as once a year for hog and chicken farmers, to show their use really works. If there is widespread antibiotic resistance on the farm they won't work, so in those cases they are also a waste of money.
