A Decade of Progress: USDA's Antimicrobial Resistance Workshop Set to Renew Action

The United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) will host a virtual Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Workshop on August 30, 2022. The workshop will be open to the public and will be an opportunity for APHIS to share with stakeholders what we’ve learned since the first AMR workshop held in 2012, find opportunities for collaboration, and guide future planning on this topic across the One Health interfaces of food safety, animal health, human health, and the environment. APHIS is cohosting the AMR workshop with our USDA partners from the Food Safety Inspection Service and the Research, Education and Economics mission area.

USDA hosted its first and only Antibiotic Resistance Workshop in 2012, public input from which was used to develop the USDA Antimicrobial Resistance Action Plan, outlining USDA’s current and proposed activities to address antimicrobial resistance. This plan also helped direct USDA’s commitments in the first National Action Plan for Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria.

“The year 2022 marks 10 years since the first USDA Antibiotic Resistance Workshop in 2012 and provides an excellent opportunity for USDA to share successes and challenges with stakeholders and partners,” USDA Under Secretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs, Jenny Lester Moffitt, said. “We will leverage all of the tools and advances made over the past decade in coordination with our federal partners and stakeholders to develop a new AMR action plan.”

The workshop will be open to the public via Zoom and teleconference. A preregistered public comment session will be held during the workshop. To attend the meeting via Zoom you must register at https://www.zoomgov.com/webinar/register/WN_LFLkbcWuTdqGT0wxBZyuOQ.

Registration is required by August 23, 2022 for members of the public who wish to speak during the public comment period. We ask that comments be limited to 5 minutes. Members of the public will be heard in the order in which they registered.

Written comments may also be submitted before and up to 2 weeks following the virtual meeting, or by close of business September 13, 2022. Written comments must be sent to usdaamrpublicmeeting@usda.gov. Please refer to Docket No. APHIS-2022-0027 when submitting comments.