Intensive farming uses antimicrobials to treat sick animals. They are also routinely given to healthy animals to prevent illness and to boost growth. These practices can encourage the spread of antimicrobial resistance in animals and humans. (Photo credit: Flickr)
Targets to cut the use of antimicrobials in animal agriculture were dropped from a key United Nations (UN) political declaration following push back from the agriculture and veterinary drug industry and meat-producing nations comprising the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The declaration is meant to commit countries to address surging resistance to antimicrobial medicines—a problem that kills nearly 1.3 million people globally in a single year, topping deaths from HIV and malaria combined.
On 26 September, global leaders will meet at the UN where they are expected to adopt the declaration. But without concrete targets, scientists, global leaders and politicians are concerned that governments won’t effectively address the problem. In particular, they will fail to curb the use of antimicrobials in farm animals, which is spurring the development of resistance to critical medicines, they warn.
U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ), democratic Senator for New Jersey, who is campaigning for improved control of antibiotics in food-producing animals in the US, said in a statement, “The massive overuse of antibiotics on factory farms in the United States is a serious threat to public health.”
“Federal agencies have a troubling history of deferring to corporate interests on this issue, and I am very concerned about any role that the United States played in weakening international commitments to reduce antibiotic use in farm animals,” he adds.
Antimicrobials on farms drives resistance
Over the past five months, member states have negotiated the text of the political declaration, which includes efforts to mobilize funding for low- and middle-income countries to monitor and track AMR, and to address antimicrobial use in farm animals. Antimicrobials are a group of drugs that kill microorganisms including bacteria, viruses, and fungi. The commitments on curbing antimicrobial use in animals were among the most contentious, sources involved in the discussions say.
“There were a lot of sensitivities around the commitments on antimicrobials in farm animals,” says Javier Yugueros-Marcos, head of AMR at the World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH), the global authority on animal health based in Paris, France.
The WOAH is among the international organizations that led discussions on AMR among global leaders, industry, research institutions and civil society that informed politicians and the UN meeting later this month.
More antimicrobials are sold for use in farm animals than for humans each year, research suggests. They are used to treat sick animals and to prevent disease—sometimes given routinely to avoid risk of infection. Diseases can spread more quickly between animals on intensive farming systems, where large numbers of individuals are kept in close quarters, and hygiene and welfare can be poor, says Yugueros-Marcos. In some regions such as the Americas, and Asia and the Pacific antimicrobials are also still used to encourage animals to grow faster. This practice is banned in Europe and the United States, although data suggests it sometimes still occurs in the latter nation.
“The misuse of essential drugs in the food production system accelerates the emergence and spread of resistance,” said Junxia Song, a zoonotic disease specialist at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Rome, Italy at a media briefing on 11 September.
Tensions over targets
Early drafts of the declaration included concrete global targets to cut the quantity of antimicrobials used in agriculture by at least 30 per cent from countries’ current levels over the next 6-years. Drafts also proposed to eliminate by 2030 the routine use in animals of antimicrobials that are important for human medicine, and to gradually phase out the use of these medically important medicines for promoting animal growth.
But in the final draft of the political declaration dated 9 September, the numerical targets are gone. Instead, member states are required to “strive to meaningfully reduce” antimicrobials used in the agri-food system over the next 6-years, among other efforts.
Documents seen by USRTK show that the governments of the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand—nations with big meat producing industries—objected to the targets. In the private UN document dated 6 June, which compiles member states’ objections and proposed changes to the declaration, the US suggested deleting the targets, as did Canada, Australia and New Zealand as a group.
A spokesperson for the US Department of Health and Human Services wrote in a statement: “The U.S. government supports ambitious and measurable steps to address AMR in animals and agrees with the goal to reduce and even eliminate inappropriate antimicrobial use in animals.”
However, the spokesperson added that “the arbitrary nature of setting reduction targets would not take into account uses of antimicrobials that are necessary and appropriate to ensure animal health and welfare”.
To set targets, more data on the use of antimicrobials in animals is needed including which drugs are used and in what volume and for what purpose, the spokesperson wrote. The US government lacks the infrastructure to collect and analyze this data, but the Food and Drug Administration is developing a public-private partnership framework to track use data in food-producing animals in the U.S, the statement says.
However, the U.S. government “supports the target of the elimination of the use for growth promotion of antimicrobial agents that are considered medically important,” the spokesperson wrote.
The Animal Health Institute (AHI), a group representing animal medicine companies in the United States located in Washington DC, also had reservations regarding the targets.
In an internal email seen by USRTK, Ginny Siller, director of government affairs at the AHI, writes that the institute has “concerns with the declaration language on volumetric reductions and growth promotion”. She adds that the institute intends to touch base with Democratic U.S. Senators to share their concerns.
Sources close to the discussions say that the changes to the declaration text also followed objections from Health for Animals, an international group of veterinary medicine companies based in Brussels, Belgium, and the International Poultry Council, a global industry group based in Tucker, Georgia in the United States.
Steven Roach, who works on safe and healthy food at the Food Animal Concerns Trust, a campaign group in Chicago, Illinois, says the US has consistently tried to weaken international standards and recommendations on antibiotic use in agriculture. For example, in 2022 the Biden administration didn’t endorse a manifesto presented at an international ministerial conference on AMR in Muscat, Oman. The manifesto, endorsed by 47 countries, included targets for curbing antimicrobial use in farm animals and was intended to lay foundations for bold political commitments to tackle AMR at the UN meeting this month.
Watered Down
Campaign groups and animal welfare institutions are disappointed with the final text of the declaration.
“It’s been watered down. They got what they wanted,” says Helle Aagaard, deputy director of ReAct Europe, a group advocating for action to tackle AMR, based in Uppsala, Sweden, referring to industry groups who expressed opposition to the targets.
Cóilín Nunan, science and policy advisor at the Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics, a campaign group in the UK, says, “they don’t want to see targets being set to reduce antibiotic use because the bottom line is that affects their bottom line.”
Neither the Animal Health Institute nor Health for Animals responded to requests for comment.
Dennis Erpelding represented the International Poultry Council, a trade organization based in Tucker, Georgia in the United States, in international discussions on AMR in the lead up to the UN meeting this month. In a post on LinkedIn, the professional networking site, he wrote that the targets are “arbitrary” and “not science based”. In a written response, he explained that he supports the use of risk analyses to assess the threat of AMR when using antimicrobials in certain species and for particular uses.
Yugueros-Marcos rejects concerns about the targets’ validity and feasibility. They are “technically supported” by data and are achievable on a global level, he says.
Jean Pierre Nyemazi, who leads a joint initiative of four international organizations including the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, to inform the intergovernmental discussions on AMR, said at the press briefing, “We need leaders to commit to specific, if possible, targets and outcome oriented actions. It’s easy to commit to broad statements but we have seen they don’t get implemented.”
This article has been update with a comment from the HHS, 9/12/2024, 15:03.
