Health Agencies Call Recommend Antibiotic Risk Assessment

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Thursday, 15 April 2004

This is interesting news considering the stories about antibiotics in eggs that we've heard over the last couple of days. Safer, of course, to eat organic eggs and avoid the antibiotics altogether!

The three big international food health agencies are proposing that global rules are developed to fight anti-microbial resistance caused by the feeding of antibiotics to livestock, blunting their effectiveness in consumers of meat and dairy products.

Recommendations have been developed by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, the Office International des Épizooties (OIE) and the World Health Organisation following a joint-workshop.

They have suggested the development of risk assessments for using these veterinary medicines that includes a threshold of resistance concept triggering controls if such drugs are over-used. They also proposed that a class of antibiotics be established - critically-important to humans - whose use in animals should be banned outright.

Source: Keith Nuthall at www.just-food.com