Farmers urged to limit antibiotics

UNITED NATIONS: The World Health Organisation is urging farmers to stop using antibiotics to promote growth and prevent disease in healthy animals, because the practice fuels dangerous drugresistant superbug infections in people.

Describing a lack of effective antibiotics for humans as ‘‘a security threat’’ on a par with ‘‘a sudden and deadly disease outbreak’’, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said yesterday ’’strong and sustained action across all sectors’’ was vital to turn back the tide of resistance and ‘‘keep the world safe’’.

The WHO ‘‘strongly recommends an overall reduction in the use of all classes of medically important antibiotics in foodproducing animals, including com- plete restriction of these antibiotics for growth promotion and disease prevention without diagnosis’’, the United Nations agency said.

Any use of antibiotics promotes the development and spread of socalled superbugs, multidrugresistant infections that can evade the medicines designed to kill them.

According to the WHO, in some countries about 80 per cent of total consumption of medically important antibiotics is in the animal sector. They are largely used in healthy animals to stop them getting sick and quickengrowth.

The WHO said such use should be completely halted.

It said in sick animals, wherever possible, tests should first be conducted to determine the most effective and prudent antibiotic to treat their specific illness.

The WHO’s new guidelines ‘‘illustrate the degree to which our regulators and large food animal producers are falling short’’, said Cameron Harsh, a senior manager for the Centre for Food Safety, a United States advocacy group.

The US Food and Drug Administration has said that medically important antibiotics should not be used for growth promotion in animals.

‘‘The recommendations erroneously conflate disease prevention with growth promotion in animals,’’ Chavonda JacobsYoung, the US Department of Agriculture’s acting chief scientist, said.

In the US, Tyson Foods Inc has stopped using antibiotics to produce its retail line of chicken. Perdue Farms, a competitor, said it eliminated the routine use of antibiotics last year.– Reuters