The abuse of antibiotics on farms is still rife despite increasing concerns about the dangers to human health, Maurice O’Scanaill, the Malta Veterinary Association secretary has said.
He was commenting in the wake of a recent vote in the European Parliament in favour of restricting the use of antimicrobial drugs to fight the growing resistance of bacteria to today’s antibiotics.
“With the World Health Organisation warning us that the world risks drifting into a post-antibiotic era, in which antibiotic resistance would cause more deaths each year than cancer, it is high time we took energetic measures and grasped the problem at its roots,” said rapporteur Françoise Grossetête, a French MEP.
Ms Grossetête said the fight against antibiotic resistance must start on farms.
“We wish to prohibit the purely preventive use of antibiotics, restrict collective treatment to very specific cases, prohibit the veterinary use of antibiotics that are critically important for human medicine and put an end to online sales of antibiotics, vaccines and psychotropic substances.
No enforcement on the sale of antibiotics from pet shops and wholesalers exists
“Thanks to these measures, we hope to reduce the amounts of antibiotics found on consumers’ plates,” Ms Grossetête said.
The use of antibiotics on farms leads to antibiotic-resistant bacteria that are a threat to human and animal health.
The WHO says antibiotic resistance – when bacteria change so antibiotics no longer work in people who need them to treat infections – is now a major threat to public health.
Campaigns on the judicious use of antibiotics are undermined by the lax practices in farms, since residues remain present in milk and meat products distributed for human consumption.
The Sunday Times of Malta last year reported that antibiotics used to treat cattle were easily bought without a prescription from pet shops.
Mr O’Scanaill said that nothing had changed since then and absolutely no enforcement on the sale of antibiotics from pet shops and wholesalers existed.
“We are burying our heads to the problem. Untrained people are administering antibiotics to farm animals without any veterinary oversight. The WHO is very concerned about antibiotic resistance, yet nothing is being done.
“This is a huge public health problem as antibiotics should only be used on animals sparingly. Unfortunately some of the most advanced antibiotics are ready available for sale. The abuse of such antibiotics risks making them redundant,” Mr O’Scanaill explained.
International scientific expert bodies have concluded, over two decades, that there is a connection between antibiotic use in animals and the loss of effectiveness of these drugs in human medicine.