Health committee  What I know more about is the pork industry, because that's what I really spent some time on. They wean their pigs a little bit later than they tend to here. They use the probiotics. They use what are called organic acids, so the proprionic acid, which seems to work as well as th

Health committee  I can't speak for Canada, obviously, but I know in the United States the U.S. Department of Agriculture did a study and they did find that, for the most part, the larger the farm, the more likely they were to use antibiotics for non-therapeutic purposes. That may be different in

Health committee  I wish I could tell you for sure, but I'm not sure I know the answer to that. I do know that, as has been mentioned, the veterinary drug directorate here in Canada issues guidelines, but the enforcement of that, if you will, is really a provincial matter, and that's different fro

Health committee  Yes, that's exactly how the draft guidances are today. They're still getting comments. They got literally thousands of comments from people who thought that was a good idea--

Health committee  I think it's a very good start. In the United States those are just guidelines, and the industry has had similar guidelines and has had, as you said, judicious-use guidelines for 30 to 40 years. We don't think we've seen a change in the amount of antibiotic that's used. I would

Health committee  In the United States, we have also looked at legislation. For 40 years they have been looking at having the industries voluntarily change what they have been doing. That hasn't worked especially well, because there still is an awful lot of it that's used, even excluding the ionop

Health committee  Certainly in Denmark they did have some trouble, especially with their weaner pigs to begin with. Those are pigs that are just leaving their mamma and eating on their own. It took the Danes about six to nine months to figure out what they could be doing instead. They are trying v

Health committee  I was just going to say that bacteria don't carry little lapel pins of what country they're from. So the resistance is the same no matter where you're at. Denmark, for example, saw some problems with some of their pigs to begin with, and that's why I said they couldn't just stop

Health committee  However, I would point out that this is ongoing. If we lose the effect of an antibiotic, we may never get it back. There's an antibiotic used in this country and in the United States, Cipro, that can be used on people for a disease called campylobacter, which is like salmonella,

Health committee  Okay, I'll give it a go first. I've actually been to Denmark and have talked to the Danes and have seen how they raise both their pigs and their chickens. They will tell you themselves that while they're certainly willing to look at any new data, they don't want to have somebody

Health committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. Good afternoon, and thank you for inviting me. My name is Gail Hansen. I'm a public health veterinarian and I'm a senior officer with The Pew Charitable Trusts. I have worked on antimicrobial resistance issues from a lot of