British veterinarians certainly intend to
be forced into antibiotic prescription reform kicking and screaming.
It’s a bit late for token changes. Much damage to public
health has long been done by over-prescription in livestock farming..
Current levels of use of antibiotics for livestock is continuing
to undermine human health, not least that of the veterinarians' own, their families’, the farmers and their families'.
The veterinarians have to prove that what they are doing is
safe for humans, not the other way round.
The Dutch position is right: take the antibiotics away and
let the veterinarians make the scientific case for being allowed to continue to prescribe, if they can.
If they are so sure there is no hazard to human health, they should have no problem comprehensively proving their case.
The Pig Site report here
Call for Science to Influence Key Decisions on
Antibiotic Use
26
October 2012
UK - The EU is considering sheltering
some key antibiotics from veterinary use to protect their efficacy in human
medicine. Yet science indicates that the link between on-farm use and the
development of resistance in human pathogens is unlikely, with politics driving
key decisions. Editor, Charlotte Johnston, reports from a UK veterinary
conference...
...Speaking at the British Mastitis
Conference, Declan O’Rourke from Ortec Veterinary Consultancy said that there
was no science behind the Dutch government’s decision to target a 70 per cent
reduction in antibiotic use between 2009 and 2015. ...
