The three big international food health agencies are proposing that global rules are developed to fight anti-microbial resistance caused by the feeding of antibiotics to livestock, blunting their effectiveness in consumers of meat and dairy products.
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Recommendations have been developed by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, the Office International des Épizooties (OIE) and the World Health Organisation following a joint-workshop.
They have suggested the development of risk assessments for using these veterinary medicines that includes a “threshold of resistance” concept triggering controls if such drugs are over-used. They also proposed that a class of antibiotics be established – “critically-important” to humans – whose use in animals should be banned outright.
