CARB Report Focuses on Antimicrobial Stewardship
April 4, 2016
In reaction to public health concerns about the effectiveness of antibiotics, the Obama Administration announced the establishment in March 2015 of the Presidential Advisory Council on Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria. The Advisory Council was formed to provide advice, information, and recommendations to the Secretary of Health and Human Services about programs intended to support Administration efforts to reduce the spread of antibiotic- resistance bacteria. NMPF has monitored this initiative and participated in several meetings to ensure that dairy industry efforts to use antibiotics judiciously are incorporated into the process of assessing best practices in the future.
The Advisory Council met on March 30-31, 2016, to finalize its first report “Report1: Initial Assessment of the National Action Plan for Combating Antibiotic –Resistant Bacteria.” The report contains a wide array of goals and recommendations to combat antimicrobial resistance in the United States with international collaborations through a One Health approach. One Health is a multiple disciplinary approach of human and veterinary medicine to address such issues as antimicrobial resistance.
The report contains wide-ranging goals and recommendations for antimicrobial stewardship in both humans and animals. For the U.S. dairy industry, these goals and recommendations fall in four focus areas: (1) on-farm antibiotic use data collection; (2) increasing antimicrobial stewardship in food and companion animals (including additional veterinary oversight); (3) additional research in the flow of antimicrobial resistance through the environment (from use in animals to people and use in people to animals); and (4) development of new disease detection, prevention, control and treatment options (vaccines, new antibiotics, alternative therapeutics, etc.).
For more than 25 years, the U.S. dairy industry has focused educational efforts on the judicious use of antimicrobial drugs through the annual publication of a Best Practices Manual. The 2016 edition of the National Dairy FARM Program: Farmers Assuring Responsible Management™ Milk and Dairy Beef Drug Residue Prevention Manual developed by NMPF is the primary educational tool for dairy farm managers throughout the country on the judicious and responsible use of antibiotics serving as the industry’s antimicrobial stewardship guide.
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