Cut down on use of antibiotics in farm animals, says British review

Agreeing and implementing a global target for agricultural antibiotic use won’t be easy, the review, led by former Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O’Neill, said, but is vital if life-saving medicines designed to fight bacterial infections are to be kept effective, both for animals and for people.

The review suggested Denmark and the Netherlands had good practices. Denmark has an average of less than 50mg of antibiotics used a year per kilogram of livestock. “Denmark has shown that a very productive farming industry can be sustained alongside relatively low levels of antibiotic use,” the review said. 

O’Neill, who presented his review at a briefing in London, said he found it “staggering” that in many countries most of the use of antibiotics is in animals, rather than in humans. He noted, for example, that in the United States, more than 70 percent of the use of medically important antibiotics is in animals, with only 30 percent in humans. “This creates a big resistance risk for everyone,” he said. “It’s time for policy makers to act on this.” Any use of antibiotics promotes the development and spread of so-called superbugs - multi-drug-resistant infections that can evade the medicines designed to kill them.

In his initial report, he estimated antibiotic and microbial resistance could kill an extra 10 million people a year and cost up to $100 trillion by 2050 if it is not brought under control. International alarm about the superbug threat is rising after the discovery in China of a gene called mcr-1 that makes bacteria resistant to all known antibiotics. Research published over the weekend said mcr-1 had also been found in bacteria samples Denmark, suggesting it is already spreading around the world.

Jeremy Farrar, an infectious disease expert and director of the Wellcome Trust health charity, said urgent action is needed. “We need international governments, policy makers and the agricultural industry to coordinate their actions and set tangible targets for the reduction and better use of antibiotics in animals.”