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The international community needs to set hard targets for using antibiotics in agriculture and should act as soon as possible to reduce the drugs’ use, a project chartered by the British government said in London today.
The Review on Antimicrobial Resistance, which has been examining how to fix antibiotic overuse and resistance for more than a year — since it released the jaw-dropping estimate that resistant bacteria will kill 10 million people per year by 2050 — said in a report and press conference that there can no longer be any dispute that farm misuse of antibiotics contributes to the global burden of resistance.
But to remedy that, the group makes a novel proposal. Instead of focusing on categories of antibiotic use — the path followed by Europe and the United States, which have placed controls on the daily micro-doses called growth promoters — it recommends focusing on quantities. It proposes that the international community agree to a maximum allowable amount of agricultural antibiotic use, while permitting nations to decide how best to meet it — provided that they do meet it within 10 years.
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At the same time, the Review calls for close attention to which antibiotics are allowed in agriculture, and recommends that nations carve out an international agreement on which crucial last-resort drugs ought to be reserved for human medical use.
Read full, original post: Proposal: Set International Targets for Farm Antibiotic Use
