Tuesday, November 7, 2017

World Health Organization calls for antibiotic ban

Farmers are reacting strongly against a recommendation from the World Health Organization to ban the use of antibiotics in healthy food-producing animals.

The National Pork Producers Association and the Meat Institute in the United States both called it too heavy-handed and broad.

They say the judicious farm use of antibiotics ought to be allowed, including disease prevention.
But the World Health Organization said the overuse and misuse of antibiotics in animals and humans is contributing to the rising threat of antibiotic resistance.

WHO noted that some types of bacteria that cause serious infections in humans already have developed resistance to most or all of the available treatments and there are “very few promising options in the research pipeline.”

The new recommendations aim to preserve the effectiveness of antibiotics that are important for human medicine, pointing out in the statement that about 80 percent of the total consumption of medically important antibiotics is in the animal sector.


WHO said most of the antibiotics are used solely to promote growth in healthy animals.