WHO Recommends Ban on Preventive Use of Antibiotics on Animals

Today, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a statement urging farmers and the food industry to "stop to stop using antibiotics routinely to promote growth and prevent disease in healthy animals." The global health watchdog argues such steps are necessary to preserve the effectiveness of antibiotics that are important to human medicine.

Specifically, WHO is recommending "an overall reduction in the use of all classes of medically important antibiotics in food-producing animals, including complete restriction of these antibiotics for growth promotion and disease prevention without diagnosis. Healthy animals should only receive antibiotics to prevent disease if it has been diagnosed in other animals in the same flock, herd, or fish population."

The National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) was quick to respond, saying any such ban on prevention uses would be "ill-advised and wrong." The group says that denying livestock and poultry necessary antibiotics would lead to "animal suffering and possibly death and would compromise the nation's food system.

NPPC goes on to explain it shares WHO's concern about the rise in antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which is why it has taken steps to make sure such drugs are used "strategically and responsibly." Producers are complying with an FDA directive prohibiting use of antibiotics important to human medicine for promoting growth and requiring feed and water use of those antibiotics only be used under veterinary prescription, NPPC elaborates.