Evidence of meeting #54 for Health in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was used.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Bloc
Luc Malo Bloc Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC
We are not in a position, at this stage, to determine if human health has been affected in some way. Correct?
President, Canadian Animal Health Institute
They continue to monitor it, but you haven't seen dramatic changes in human health in the Danish experience, from what I understand. The situation is similar in some of the other European countries where they're doing the monitoring.
Senior Officer, Pew Charitable Trusts
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, a bad vomiting, diarrhea disease. The level of resistance to that antibiotic was very low until we starting using it on animals. Now Cipro is rarely used as a first drug of choice for diarrheal diseases in this country or in the U.S. However, in Australia, where they never allowed it for use in animals, the resistance to Cipro for campylobacter is still very low, so that they are still able to use that drug in Australia.
NDP
Megan Leslie NDP Halifax, NS
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you all for your testimony. I have learned a lot from your testimony. When Ms. Hansen was describing the situation in Denmark, that antibiotics are prescribed for sick animals and for specific diseases, I would have thought that was the case here in Canada. It is unbelievable to me that it is not.
My colleague Mr. Dosanjh was unsuccessful in securing voluntary commitment to banning the use of antibiotics in livestock that is not actually sick.
My question is for Ms. Hansen and Mr. Smith. Because we are legislators, I am looking for a solution. How do we do this? The EU banned this in 2006. How can we do this in Canada? Is it as complicated as we're led to believe?
Executive Director, Environmental Defence
Before I answer that, if I could just go back to Monsieur Malo's questions a little bit and just point out that, in terms of concrete evidence linking declines in bacterial resistance in humans and better policy, you don't have to look any further than a study last year from Quebec, which Dr. Hansen referred to. After producers voluntarily stopped using ceftiofur for a few months, there was a dramatic decline in ceftiofur resistance in both food and in people. When they started to use it again, resistance started to increase. Interestingly, as Canadians and talking about this here, one of the smoking-gun studies now referenced on the international stage is the Canadian study, which I hope the committee would take a look at.
I just wanted to add that, before perhaps Dr. Hansen answers.
Senior Officer, Pew Charitable Trusts
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 ionophores, which has been talked about, which is an antibiotic not used in humans. But even excepting that, there are an awful lot of antibiotics used for healthy animals.
In the United States we're contemplating—our Food and Drug Administration, which would be similar to Health Canada's VVD—disallowing that approval that they approved, similar to what they did here. They approved that back in the 1950s and 1960s, when we thought we were going to have a new drug every week. Our FDA is looking at changing its guidelines and we're also looking at a legislative fix so that antibiotics can be used for sick animals, if they are prescribed by a veterinarian, or for animals that have been exposed to disease, but not for healthy animals.
NDP
Senior Officer, Pew Charitable Trusts
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 very diligently to keep down the amount of antibiotics they are using, but, as has been pointed out by others here, it isn't just the amount of antibiotic but how you are using it. If you use a very low level all the time, it would be like feeding your children antibiotics with their breakfast cereal every morning to make sure they don't get disease later on.
Executive Director, Environmental Defence
If I could comment on your question about what statute is required or regulations are required, in the wake of the CBC report, we're doing a more thorough analysis of this. BPA in baby bottles, phthalates in kids' toys, flame retardants in consumer electronics—obviously non-food items—none of those important changes of the last couple of years required any new statute. It was regulatory. In this case, what we are talking about is simply improved regulation and improved monitoring.
NDP
Megan Leslie NDP Halifax, NS
Can you help me with the analysis you're doing? We have the CFIA that ensures that drugs are being used properly. We have CIPARS, which is part of the Public Health Agency, and they monitor antimicrobial resistance. We have the veterinary drug directorate, and they approve drugs for livestock.
I don't know where the health piece is. Who is looking out for the health of Canadians? Are you able to answer that?
Executive Director, Environmental Defence
I was very interested in Dr. Prescott's comment citing the 2002 report that states responsibility for this is all over the map. I would agree.
You have, for instance, this strange situation where CIPARS is publishing information, ringing an alarm bell essentially, and pointing to that recent Quebec study. But it's like a joke with no punchline. There was no next step coming from them. So I do think that's a--
Professor, Ontario Veterinary College, University of Guelph; Representative, Canadian Animal Health Institute
The approval of drugs is a federal responsibility. It is done through Health Canada and monitored partly by CFIA. The use of antimicrobial drugs is a provincial responsibility, through the veterinary acts or livestock medicines acts.
There's this federal-provincial crack, which means, for example, with the ceftiofur story, if you wish to say you can't use ceftiofur extra labelling for injecting chickens, the only thing you can do federally is put a warning label on saying there may be problems of resistance. But there's no way currently under the regulations to say you cannot use ceftiofur extra label for injection of chicks, let's say. There's no way to do it.
Conservative
Executive Director, Chicken Farmers of Canada
With regard to CIPARS, I want to make it clear: Chicken Farmers of Canada has worked closely with CIPARS, and CIPARS itself wouldn't come to the same conclusions that Mr. Smith has.
We've gone through this and this connection on ceftiofur in Quebec. CIPARS will admit it has done research at a human level, a retail level, and at a processing level, but to date there has not been any surveillance done on-farm in poultry.
The other thing that is key, and we keep going back to this point, is that because it was withdrawn in Quebec it had a correlation there. The chicken produced on one farm is not necessarily shipped to a processing plant in that province. The chicken from that processing plant in that province is not necessarily shipped to retail stores in that province. There is no causal link. There is a correlation there, but there is not a causal link.
Conservative
Colin Carrie Conservative Oshawa, ON
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank everyone for coming.
I find the discussion we're having this afternoon quite interesting. I think everybody would like to see a reasonable use of antibiotics, but I think it's important, at least for me, not to confuse the issues. I think there is still a little confusion around the table, and I want to clear something up.
I have a question for Mr. Dungate. Madam Hansen had a comment that was concerning to me: it was like feeding children antibiotics in their cereal to prevent kids getting sick. I think the analogy is that this is what we're doing when we feed livestock preventative antibiotics.
I was listening to what you said in response to Mr. Dosanjh. My understanding is that if you use fewer preventative antibiotics, what you call ionophores, you could potentially get increased disease in the flock. Then you would have to use more of the antibiotics that you would use in humans, which may lead to an increased resistance.
Is that what you said earlier? Was I understanding it?
Executive Director, Chicken Farmers of Canada
Yes. I think this is the key part. We keep talking about healthy birds and sick birds. When you have an incident in a barn and you have sick animals, you need to treat those animals. We have animal welfare regulations in this country that say you must treat that flock.
Generally when you get an outbreak in a disease you have to use a more powerful antibiotic, and you have to use one that is more important for human medicine. That is the resistance we're concerned about.
As Dr. Rosengren tried to point out, it isn't just that it's a healthy bird and it's not just that it's growth promotion, there's a...I think you called it a subclinical part. I wonder if you would repeat that piece for us. I think it's important.
Representative, Rosengren Epidemiology Consulting, Chicken Farmers of Canada
Sure.
Disease in a flock—we're talking about population medicine, not individual animal medicine here—is like a scale, from white to black with every shade of grey. In these flocks we don't have healthy and unhealthy, we have every spectrum in between.
If we wait until birds are clinically ill, those birds are spreading pathogens into the barn and we get a cycling and an amplification. It's like an avalanche effect. By using antimicrobials prudently and early, on a flock basis we can prevent that disease from rising.
I'd like to go back to Ms. Hansen's point about the European Union experience. You're right that they were very successful in raising livestock without growth promotional antibiotics. I concur with that point. What they have not been successful in doing is raising livestock without antibiotics.
They have removed those growth promotional antibiotics, and they've had to go to the higher-powered therapeutic drugs that are important in humans. I guess that goes back to Mr. Smith's point, with which I completely concur. I don't think we should be willy-nilly using these very important antibiotics either. That's why it's very important to maintain our available repertoire of antibiotics for the judicious use by veterinarians.
Conservative
Colin Carrie Conservative Oshawa, ON
I agree. I just wanted to make sure I clarified what you were saying, because there appeared to be some confusion around the table. None of us wants to be alarmist, and I think in Canada we can rest assured we have one of the safest food systems in the world. But Mr. Smith asked if it makes sense to use antibiotics on healthy chickens, to trump antibiotic use in a sick child. Is that really the question we should be asking here? Dr. Bergen, I don't think you've said anything. Can we get a comment from that side of the table? Dr. Rosengren, does that make sense? I would like to get the doctors' comments on that.
Representative, Rosengren Epidemiology Consulting, Chicken Farmers of Canada
I think you're right, that's not the point. It's not an either-or situation. By using low in-feed antimicrobials on a flock or herd basis to prevent disease, we're ensuring that only healthy birds or pork or beef make it to market. So it's not an either-or; we're trying to protect the safe food supply in Canada.
Conservative
Colin Carrie Conservative Oshawa, ON
So the way I'm understanding this, you use these preventive antibiotics, or what you call class IV ionophores, and they're antibiotics we typically don't use in humans and you're doing that so the birds or the products don't get sick so you don't have to use the really important antibiotics used for human consumption. Is that right? Jean, I see you nodding your head too. Am I getting it? I'm trying to figure this out around the table. Do you have a comment?
President, Canadian Animal Health Institute
Back to a statement made by Mr. Smith--I think it was Mr. Smith--that 75% of antimicrobials are used in food animal production, I think one of the points we were trying to make.... I don't know what the percentage is in Canada, but I have seen some data that said that of those, 45% have no relationship to human medicine, and a lot of these ionophores are used in production of beef, pork, and chicken.
Conservative
Colin Carrie Conservative Oshawa, ON
Thank you very much for that.
Mr. Dungate, you mentioned the Marketplace piece, and I must confess I haven't seen it yet. I do plan on watching it. Would you like to comment on the conclusions of that piece on TV that prompted or had something to do with this meeting?
