Antibiotics in food animal production and resistant bacteria in humans

In 2011, the World Health Organisation (WHO) made antimicrobial resistance the theme of its annual World Health Day. The WHO rang the alarm because the growing problem of antimicrobial resistance results in ever-shrinking availability of effective antibiotics. Using the slogan ’no action today, no cure tomorrow‘, the WHO called on various groups within society to take responsibility and ensure the medication required to treat people with bacterial infections remains available in the future. The spectre of the pre-antibiotic age, when people died of relatively trivial infections, may rise again if nothing is done. The food animal production sector - which produces food of animal origin - was expressly addressed by the WHO.

In 2010, the Ministers of Health, Welfare and Sport and of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality of that day asked the Health Council of the Netherlands to examine what is known regarding the contribution of antibiotic use in food animal production to the presence of resistant bacteria in humans and what measures can be taken to reduce this contribution.

A Committee of the Health Council published an advisory report to the Ministers on 31 August this year. According to this Committee, there are three groups of resistant bacteria that pose the largest threat to public health and for which there are concerns about a possible causal relationship with the use of antibiotics in food animal production. These three groups are the vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE), the methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and the bacteria that produce extended spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL). The biggest problem is posed by the ESBL-producing bacteria.
From the perspective of public health and in line with the implemented policy to reduce the use of antibiotics in food animal production, the Committee recommends to reduce the use of antibiotics in general and some classes of antibiotics in particular.