The White House Advisory Council on Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria (CARB) has released its first progress report on the nation’s action plan for fighting antibiotic-resistance in human and animal health settings.
The main focus of the report centers on a “One Health” agenda for combating antimicrobial resistance (AMR), which emphasizes an interdisciplinary view of human, animal, and environmental health, rather than addressing each health sector individually. The report stresses that “microbes do not respect geographical, political or species boundaries,” and acknowledges that animal and human health AMR activities have remained largely disconnected thus far.
The CARB report highlights additional objectives that were supported by the poultry and livestock industries, including increased inter-agency cooperation; research incentives for antibiotic alternatives; and antibiotic stewardship promotion programs for antibiotics in both human and animal medicine.
“The top priority of farmers and chicken companies is to raise healthy chickens because healthy chickens are directly related to a safe and wholesome food supply. Responsible, FDA-approved veterinary treatment and prevention benefits animal welfare and health by reducing the need for increased doses of shared-class antibiotics in the event of widespread disease,” said Dr. Ashley Peterson, senior vice president of scientific and regulatory affairs for the National Chicken Council,
“We are in the business of providing choice in the marketplace, without compromising the health and welfare of our birds or the safety of our products. The chicken industry has been a leader in proactively and voluntarily taking steps toward finding alternative ways to control disease while reducing antibiotic use,” Peterson said.
In response to the report’s findings, Peterson noted that:
- NCC supports the strong embrace of a one-health approach and agree that dialogue between experts in the veterinary and human health sectors must be strengthened to better coordinate and optimize combating antibiotic resistance;
- We support economic incentives to drive innovation for the development of new antibiotics, vaccines, and diagnostics for disease detection;
- We agree that coordination between federal agencies will be essential to harmonize efforts and prevent duplication;
- We agree that international collaboration by HHS and USDA with WHO, FAO, and OIE will serve to strengthen the global approach to this global challenge;
- We support the development of “antibiotic stewardship promotion” programs and education campaigns for antibiotics in both human and animal medicine;
- We maintain that estimates of animal-species-specific antimicrobial sales data is not an informative source of data for evaluating antibiotic resistance.
“Finally, our industry supports FDA Guidance 209 and 213, and we recognize the responsibility of the industry to implement the recommendations to phase out the use of medically-important antibiotics for growth promotion. All of our member companies are already eliminating their use for growth promotion and most are moving far in advance of regulatory deadlines for compliance. We also support FDA’s Veterinary Feed Directive (VFD), as veterinary oversight is important to continued success. Today, all chicken farms are under a health program designed by a licensed veterinarian,” Peterson said.
The full advisory council CARB report is available here.
