The risks have been known for decades –
mainly that the use of antimicrobials wipes out all bacteria except those that
can survive and those survivors could cause harm to people and antibiotic
medicines would not work to control them.
There has been particular concern about
the on-farm use of antibiotics as growth promotants because they are used at levels too low to wipe out all bacteria, but high enough to create an ideal
atmosphere where antibiotic-resistant bacteria gain an advantage and are free to multiply.
I have always questioned why farmers would have so little regard for the health and wellbeing of their customers. I also question whether many of these antibiotic feed additives actually work as intended; if not, they are not only a risk to public health, but also a huge waste of money.
Do farmers run trials to check whether the growth promotants are actually working? I doubt it!
Black has
raised specific concerns about the use of cephalosporins by poultry farmers, a
class of antibiotics that the medical profession desperately wants to keep in
its arsenal to counter infections and diseases.
The United
States has, therefore, banned the on-farm use of cephalosporins, including a
ban on extra-label veterinary prescriptions. Canada's provincial governments continue to allow
extra-label veterinary prescriptions, but urges veterinarians to be cautious. The federal government governs sales, and it continues to allow them to be sold.
There is a
troublesome companion concern: Canada allows farmers to import antibiotics and
other livestock medicines under “own use”
provisions in the law.
The “own use” provision was written
into legislation to allow people to import three months worth of medicines for
their own personal use; “own use” for animals was not intended, but has been
allowed.
Farmers can and have used the “own use”
clause to import medicines and antibiotics that have never been evaluated in
Canada for quality, for safety or for efficacy (whether they work as intended).
Black says the combination of
extra-label prescriptions and own use importing leave the Canadian public
exposed to dangerous risks from the poultry farmers’ use of cephalasporins.
He points to a petition that
veterinarians, doctors and others concerned about antibiotic resistance have
filed with Health Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada, Agriculture and
Agri-Food Canada, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the Canada Border
Services Agency.
It says, in part:
“Failure to address these regulatory
gaps (extra-label use and own use importing) in the control and the use of antibiotics
in Canada is a potential threat not only to the health of Canadians but to the
sustainability of Canada’s trade and marketing of livestock and their products.
“The OIE International Standards on
Antimicrobial Resistance (15) call for effective national controls on the licensing,
manufacture, sale, distribution and use of antimicrobials in food producing
animals as well as for monitoring of such usage and the resulting impacts.
“These standards are reflected in one
of the criteria (II.9)
that the OIE uses to evaluate national
veterinary services (15) and on a scale of 1-5 (Appendix 1) Canada could arguably
score no higher than "2" with its current regulatory gaps.
“The potential for restrictive actions
by countries and markets
concerned about this issue for reasons
of health and environmental protection seems obvious.”
What seems obvious is that any Canadian
exports found with residues of drugs banned in the U.S., including cephalosporins,
would lead to a ban on all imports of that type of product from Canada.
While Black is drawing attention to
poultry, many of Canada’s pork and dairy farmers use the extra-label and own
use loopholes to obtain antibiotics for their animals.
Because cephalosporins are highly
effective, they are likely to be popular with farmers using the own use loophole.
Dairy
farmers are likely to use the loophole to import Bovine somatotropin (BST) to
boost milk production; the product is allowed in the U.S., but not Canada.
Black runs a blog,
Canadiansmallflockers.blogspot. com
where he has posted the list of questions he is asking the federal
officials. He is likely to post any responses they offer on the same blog.
Frankly, there is no acceptable response other than banning "own use" importing for animals and copying the U.S. ban on cephalosporins, even as an extra-label veterinary-prescription antibiotic.
