Skip to main content

Main menu

  • Home
  • COVID-19
    • Articles & podcasts
    • Blog posts
    • Collection
    • News
  • Content
    • Current issue
    • Past issues
    • Early releases
    • Collections
    • Sections
    • Blog
    • Infographics & illustrations
    • Podcasts
    • Classified ads
  • Authors
    • Overview for authors
    • Submission guidelines
    • Submit a manuscript
    • Forms
    • Editorial process
    • Editorial policies
    • Peer review process
    • Publication fees
    • Reprint requests
  • CMA Members
    • Overview for members
    • Earn CPD Credits
    • Print copies of CMAJ
    • Career Ad Discount
  • Subscribers
    • General information
    • View prices
  • Alerts
    • Email alerts
    • RSS
  • JAMC
    • À propos
    • Numéro en cours
    • Archives
    • Sections
    • Abonnement
    • Alertes
  • CMAJ JOURNALS
    • CMAJ Open
    • CJS
    • JAMC
    • JPN

User menu

Search

  • Advanced search
CMAJ
  • CMAJ JOURNALS
    • CMAJ Open
    • CJS
    • JAMC
    • JPN
CMAJ

Advanced Search

  • Home
  • COVID-19
    • Articles & podcasts
    • Blog posts
    • Collection
    • News
  • Content
    • Current issue
    • Past issues
    • Early releases
    • Collections
    • Sections
    • Blog
    • Infographics & illustrations
    • Podcasts
    • Classified ads
  • Authors
    • Overview for authors
    • Submission guidelines
    • Submit a manuscript
    • Forms
    • Editorial process
    • Editorial policies
    • Peer review process
    • Publication fees
    • Reprint requests
  • CMA Members
    • Overview for members
    • Earn CPD Credits
    • Print copies of CMAJ
    • Career Ad Discount
  • Subscribers
    • General information
    • View prices
  • Alerts
    • Email alerts
    • RSS
  • JAMC
    • À propos
    • Numéro en cours
    • Archives
    • Sections
    • Abonnement
    • Alertes
  • Visit CMAJ on Facebook
  • Follow CMAJ on Twitter
  • Follow CMAJ on Pinterest
  • Follow CMAJ on Youtube
  • Follow CMAJ on Instagram
News

Crackdown on factory farm drug use urged

Paul Christopher Webster
CMAJ January 10, 2012 184 (1) E23-E24; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.109-4055
Paul Christopher Webster
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • Article
  • Responses
  • Metrics
  • PDF
Loading

The federal government must crackdown on the use of antibiotics such as cephalosporins and fluoroquinolones within the nation’s meat industry because of the threat that antibiotic resistance poses to public health, says one of the government’s leading veterinary drug safety officials.

“The writing is on the wall,” Manisha Mehrotra, director of the human safety division within Health Canada’s Veterinary Drugs Directorate, told a conference on veterinary antimicrobial stewardship in Toronto, Ontario, in November 2011. “We can no longer have these medically important drugs [available to meat producers] over the counter. ... We are considering moving to make all the drugs that are medically important available only on prescription. And we are considering re-reviewing all drugs approved before 2004. There needs to be regulatory amendment.”

That will necessitate a prohibition on the use of cephalosporins and fluoroquinolones without direct veterinary supervision, Mehrota said.

Yet, achieving that will require substantial changes at the veterinary drugs directorate itself and resolution of jurisdictional conflicts with the provinces.

Mehorta noted that independent assessments indicate that federal oversight of antibiotic use in factory farms is dismal. Health Canada has fallen behind the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in reforming regulations governing food industry use of human drugs, she said. “I feel like we’ve been handed a B minus and an F. … The time is right to have these solutions in Canada as well.”

“Modernization” of the directorate will be required, she added, noting that Canada has fallen behind the United States on several fronts, including the use fluoroquinolones (along with cephalosporins) in poultry. A recent surveillance report from the Public Health Agency of Canada’s (PHAC) Canadian Integrated Program for Antibiotic Resistance Surveillance (CIPARS) has raised new concerns about the use of fluoroquinolones among British Columbia and Saskatchewan chicken farms (www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/cipars-picra/2008/index-eng.php,).

Figure1

Direct veterinary supervision would be required to inject animals with cephalosporins and fluoroquinolones if the federal and provincial governments move to restrict over the counter use of the antibiotics.

Image courtesy of © 2012 Thinkstock

Two proposed laws currently before the US Congress — “The Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act” and “The Strategies to Address Antimicrobial Resistance Act” — would phase out the use of seven classes of drugs for growth promotion and routine disease prevention in food animals, unless drug makers demonstrate such use is safe. They would also compel the FDA to collect, compile and publish antibiotic sales data, as well as bolster antibiotic resistance surveillance and oversight.

Alarms have long been sounded over Canadian management of antibiotic resistance (www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.109-3109). Critics have charged that the federal government has failed to tighten off-label drug usage on farms (www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.091009) or to close a legal loophole that allows massive imports of unapproved drugs (www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.090525).

In reforming oversight, federal officials also indicated that there is a need to compel industry disclosure about the extent of their use of cephalosporins and fluoroquinolones, which experts say is contributing to the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. While the Canadian Food Inspection Agency can review some data on drug use, industry can block its release on the grounds that it is commercially confidential, says Ashwani Tiwari, acting national manager of epidemiology and risk mitigation for the agency.

“We are often in the dark” about the extent of drug use, including off-label use, adds Rebecca Irwin, chief scientist for CIPARS. “We have fractured, sparse data.”

Conducting public health surveillance without drug use data is “like flying without flying,” added Richard Reid Smith, a veterinary epidemiologist with PHAC’s Laboratory for Food-borne Zoonoses, in Guelph, Ontario.

In light of industry’s refusal to provide data on drug use, David White, director of research at the US Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Veterinary Medicine, recommended that Canadian surveillance officials bolster whole-genome sequencing capacity, which would allow investigators to track resistance in humans to specific sources within the meat and poultry.

White told the Toronto gathering that the CIPARS data is viewed by the FDA as a “real red flag,” He added that the ability of bacteria to become antibiotic resistant is “like a snowball rolling down a hill. These things keep accumulating new genes.”

Proper regulation of meat industry use of antibiotics will also require resolving jurisdictional issues with the provinces.

Meat production is currently regulated under provincial laws that fail to address the growing problem with antibiotic resistance driven by drug misuse, explains David Léger, a veterinary epidemiologist with CIPARS. The vast majority of regulations in Canada are geared toward lowering drug residues in meat rather than protecting against antibiotic resistance, he says, adding that Quebec is the sole province that requires the prescription-only usage of human drugs in animals.

A Council of Canadian Academies panel recently called for an “integrated, multidimensional approach” toward government risk assessment of drug use in food production (www.scienceadvice.ca/uploads/eng/assessments%20and%20publications%20and%20news%20releases/animal%20health/final_ah_web_report_eng.pdf). But completely absent from the panel’s report was any mention of the threat to human health posed by increasing antimicrobial resistance among livestock (www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.109-4039).

Dr. Alastair Cribb, panel chair and dean of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Calgary in Alberta, says the need for improved risk assessments is imperative. “And this needs to happen sooner rather than later.”

PreviousNext
Back to top

In this issue

Canadian Medical Association Journal: 184 (1)
CMAJ
Vol. 184, Issue 1
10 Jan 2012
  • Table of Contents
  • Index by author

Article tools

Respond to this article
Print
Download PDF
Article Alerts
To sign up for email alerts or to access your current email alerts, enter your email address below:
Email Article

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word on CMAJ.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person you are recommending the page to knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Crackdown on factory farm drug use urged
(Your Name) has sent you a message from CMAJ
(Your Name) thought you would like to see the CMAJ web site.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Citation Tools
Crackdown on factory farm drug use urged
Paul Christopher Webster
CMAJ Jan 2012, 184 (1) E23-E24; DOI: 10.1503/cmaj.109-4055

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
‍ Request Permissions
Share
Crackdown on factory farm drug use urged
Paul Christopher Webster
CMAJ Jan 2012, 184 (1) E23-E24; DOI: 10.1503/cmaj.109-4055
Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Jump to section

  • Article
  • Responses
  • Metrics
  • PDF

Related Articles

  • No related articles found.
  • PubMed
  • Google Scholar

Cited By...

  • No citing articles found.
  • Google Scholar

More in this TOC Section

  • Does shaming have a place in public health?
  • Trudeau promises to boost federal health transfers when the pandemic is over
  • Should Canada aim for #CovidZero?
Show more News

Similar Articles

Content

  • Current issue
  • Past issues
  • Collections
  • Sections
  • Blog
  • Podcasts
  • Alerts
  • RSS
  • Early releases

Information for

  • Advertisers
  • Authors
  • Reviewers
  • CMA Members
  • Media
  • Reprint requests
  • Subscribers

About

  • General Information
  • Journal staff
  • Editorial Board
  • Governance Council
  • Journal Oversight
  • Careers
  • Contact
  • Copyright and Permissions

Copyright 2021, Joule Inc. or its licensors. All rights reserved. ISSN 1488-2329 (e) 0820-3946 (p)

All editorial matter in CMAJ represents the opinions of the authors and not necessarily those of the Canadian Medical Association or its subsidiaries.

Powered by HighWire