Because the 27 want to reduce antibiotics by moving away from agriculture
The impact of antibiotic resistance constitutes one of the great planetary risks: the current 700 thousand deaths per year could become 10 million in 2050. The article by Enrico Martial
On 29 June, at the Agriculture Council, the 27 ministers also dealt with antibiotic resistance, an issue that concerns human health and which is relevant in animal husbandry, in which 70% of antibiotics are used on a global scale, with a no-action growth estimate of 67% between 2010 and 2030, according to the United Nations. The impact of antibiotic resistance constitutes one of the great planetary risks, given that the current 700 thousand deaths per year could become 10 million in 2050. Italy goes wrong in this, because in 2015 it was attributed 10,700 deaths from antibiotic- resistance, one third of the 33 thousand registered in Europe.
During the Agriculture Council, the topic was among the secondary ones , but it acquired political value due to the fact that several ministers took the floor to express support and encourage the Commission to a European harmonization of the rules to intervene on antibiotic resistance in all States members.
He has been told to go a little further than he is doing today. The EU has recently been taking on health issues more clearly, that is, from the mandate letter from President Von der Leyen of 1 December 2019 to Commissioner Stella Kyriakides (in which she also relied on the antibiotic -resistance) and the acceleration caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Thus, on the One-Health policy – according to which there is only one health that man shares with the animal world – we are a bit in the middle of a transformation. Until now, the European Union had used the means available, combining European funds, stakeholders (companies, experts, associations) and institutions. It had set up a Joint Action on Antimicrobial resistance and Healthcare-associated, in acronym EU-JAMRAI , which has served since 2017 to identify issues and problems, even in individual member countries, to understand obstacles and possible solutions.
Among the first proposals, always within the framework of a European competence on health which in the treaties is only complementary (and therefore marginal), the human health problem on antibiotics has begun to be tackled starting from agriculture, with the new policy "from the farm to the table ". In this context, concretely, it is intended to reduce the sale of antibiotics to farms and aquaculture by 50% by 2030 and to introduce mechanisms for the containment and control of antibiotics with the new regulations on "veterinary medicine" (Reg. 6/2019 ) and on "medicated feed" (Medicated Feed, Reg. 4/2019). With the delegated acts currently under discussion, implementation will start in January 2022.
Between Joint Action and these regulations (rules that apply directly) it is understood, however, that the enormous question is addressed with the means that exist, a little as it can, although it is already a lot. In fact, on the economic system of European breeding, it is already very much to think that from January 2022 there will be a ban on the systematic use of antibiotics in farms, to make up for hygienic deficiencies or to increase productivity, admitting them only for the single animal, for a real risk of spreading the infection and because there are no suitable alternatives. To understand each other, let's also think only of the cage farming of laying hens, which in Italy were 42% in the 2020 data, albeit in decline . It is therefore a productive and consumer transformation.
This “very much” which begins next January 1st, must be integrated with something else: and there are at least eight new instruments, which are listed in the document brought to the Agriculture Council on 28 and 29 June . We must mention them, because we read the policies of the next few years.
The first group of four tools is organizational and legislative. These are the revision of the surveillance of health risks also for antibiotic resistance and of the mandates both to the ECDC (European Center for Disease Control) and to the EMA, the European Medicines Agency: to be strengthened, indeed a reference but have not really shone for example during Covid. Then we add the (only) 8.5 million for the whole EU on antibiotic resistance (AMR) in the EU4Health 2021-202 program, the new mandate on this issue to the newly established Health Emergency Agency (HERA), and finally, a new antibiotic-resistance pool between five European agencies (including EMA and ECDC).
Then there is a second group dedicated to European and national strategies: the EU Pharmaceutical Strategy (innovation, support for new antibiotics, reserves and production capacities in the Union) and the joint review of national plans on antibiotic resistance, which also concern the reduction in the development of infections in hospitals (in Italy the risk is 6%, the highest among the 27 Member States).
Finally, there is the third "agricultural" group: the aforementioned new rules on antibiotics that will start on farms from next January and then other new ones to be drawn up in the legislation for some veterinary diseases determined precisely by resistance to antibiotics.
As you will notice, of these eight complicated actions, only the last two are strictly agricultural. This is how the European Union goes, in this case talking about human health within the Agriculture Council, since there is no Health Council, except the one that talks about it in the midst of Employment, social affairs and consumers.
The road is very long, but so do the Member States when they understand that they cannot solve a problem on their own: they find their way into existing policies. Only later – if successful – will a more marked common European competence emerge, in this case in the field of health. We have to see if it will be done in time.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/antibiotici-allevamento-salute-umana/ on Fri, 02 Jul 2021 06:55:44 +0000.