Framework for Responsible Antibiotic Use

A framework for replacement, reduction and refinement needs to be established for the responsible use of antimicrobials along the supply chain.

The measures that should be implemented by vets, farmers, producers, retailers and the pharmaceutical industry need to be communicated to consumers.

This is one of the main findings put forward by a top level roundtable, Antimicrobials – Who Needs Them? chaired by the Food Animal Initiative in the UK together with the pharmaceutical company Ceva.

The roundtable agreed a path establishing new and standardised measures for antibiotic use that can be implemented at producer level and that can also make changes in the way antibiotics are used at both national and regional level.

The roundtable said that in establishing this path for an effective reduction in use of antibiotics animal health and welfare standards together with productivity have to be maintained.
The group also called for a common understanding and definition of the term 'Critically Important Antimicrobials' (CIA) and which antibiotics that are used in food producing animals can be described as critically important.

Meanwhile, research at the Department of Sociology at Texas A&M University, has examined the social psychology of antibiotic use among veterinarians.

The researchers Dr Morgan Scott and Dr Alex McIntosh found that several factors influenced why and how antibiotics are used, including policy, economics, social norms regarding treatment, and a belief that antibiotics are “a good thing to do.”

“When you start understanding the behaviour, you start to realise that the aggregate that defines the perceived behavioural constraint is the policy and the regulations that oversee the use of antibiotics as well as the unwritten policy of why people do what they do,” said Dr Scott.

Dr Scott, along with collaborators at Texas Tech and Hull University in the UK, is now looking at systems approaches as ways to understand policy and how it can be structured to include as many viewpoints as possible.