Strategy for antibiotic reduction inadequate

Greens criticize inadequate plans for antibiotic reduction in animal husbandry

07/24/2012

The massive use of antibiotics in animal husbandry has been aggravated for months due to the associated spread of multidrug-resistant pathogens in the review. The Federal Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner (CSU) had therefore already agreed in April at the Spring Conference of Ministers of Agriculture with the countries in the context of the proposed amendment to the Medicines Act, the legal basis for a corresponding Germany-wide antibiotics database to create.

However, this measure is not sufficient to sustainably reduce the use of antibiotics in agriculture, said the deputy leader of the Green Party parliamentary group, Bärbel Höhn, in an interview with the „Frankfurter Rundschau“ (FR). The bill by the Federal Minister of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection does not do justice to the growing prevalence of antimicrobial resistance in animal and human medicine, according to Höhn's criticism of the planned amendment to the German Medicines Act.

Reduce antibiotic use in animal husbandry
The Greens have long been calling for a reduction in the use of antibiotics in animal husbandry. Various studies have highlighted the farmers' careless handling of the drugs and linked them to the spread of multidrug-resistant pathogens. Often antibiotics are still used today to promote growth in mass animal husbandry, although this has long since been banned. In order to understand how much antibiotics are used in which company, a database is urgently needed. This has long been seen by Aigner after initial privacy concerns. Now, however, the question arises, which measures can contribute to the reduction of antibiotic use. Because the simple recording of the malady promises no improvement for a long time.

Vital antibiotics become ineffective
If the procedure continues as before, it leads „mass livestock farming means that vital antibiotics become ineffective, "Bärbel Höhn told „FR“. Also be „The measures proposed by the Federal Government to lash in order to get to grips with the increasing aggravation of the resistance situation“, said the former Minister of Agriculture of North Rhine-Westphalia. „Deaths of immunocompromised individuals by resistant germs are too high a price for the production of cheap schnitzels“, Höhn criticized. The agricultural expert of the Greens parliamentary group, Friedrich Ostendorff, supplemented the „FR“, that „improved documentation requirements do not yet constitute a reduction strategy.“ Thus, studies in Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia have shown that the use of antibiotics in animal husbandry meanwhile „has reached a completely absurd and dangerous extent.“

Unclear effects of antibiotic use on the environment
The Greens are also extremely dissatisfied with the German government's response to a recent request for antibiotics in livestock farming. So the Federal Agriculture Minister admitted, „that with 780 tons of antibiotics, far more is used annually than the Ministry previously thought and 114 million chickens received antibiotics 2.3 times on average during their 32-day life“, the Greens report in a press release. 27.5 million pigs were given antibiotics 5.9 times over the course of six months, with 90 percent of the antibiotics excreted unchanged by the animals. The polluted manure and the manure land according to the Greens then without major concerns on the floors. In the opinion of Friedrich Ostendorff numerous questions arise, such as „What happens to the antibiotics and what effects they have on soil organisms?“ or „How do the crops that grow on the contaminated soil change??“ However, these points remain in the response of the Federal Government before, according to the criticism of the green-agricultural expert. (Fp)

Also read about antibiotics in animal husbandry:
Much more antibiotics in the animal's mast
Massive use of antibiotics in farm animals
Health: Chicken full of antibiotics
Antibiotics contaminated chicken

Picture credits: PeTA Germany e.V.