Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I will be speaking in English, but I will be happy to answer any questions in French.
Thank you not only for inviting me but for taking the time to study this important issue.
My name is Rick Smith. I'm the executive director of Environmental Defence. I have a PhD in biology.
We're a non-partisan environmental organization that focuses on human health. It's been our pleasure to work with all parties in this Parliament to move forward some highly significant decisions to protect Canadian consumers, decisions like the ban on bisphenol A in baby bottles, an international best practice now emulated by the European Union; the recent announcements that Canada would be matching U.S. and European standards to get toxic phthalates out of kids' toys and to get toxic flame retardants out of consumer electronics; and of course, in the last couple of months, the unanimous adoption by the House of Commons of a modernized Consumer Product Safety Act, finally making Canadian consumer product standards comparable to those in the European Union and in other jurisdictions.
All these were positive steps forward. I would submit that they were no-brainers in terms of good public policy. They were certainly squarely in the interests of Canadian consumers, and they were all supported by all parties in this Parliament.
I think the matter before you today is in this same vein. At least I hope it is.
I'd like to make two points today. The first is that the routine and unregulated use of antibiotics as a growth promotant in agriculture is harming human health and safety. The second is that, just as has happened in Canada over the past few years with respect to the decisions I just mentioned, Canadians surely have the right to expect improvements in the regulation of antibiotics similar to what has already occurred in Europe.
If we go back just a few years, of course routinely treated bacterial infections killed people until the 1950s, when modern antibiotics started to be used. They are an indispensable pillar of today's health system, but without action from the federal government we risk morphing today's annoying ailments back into yesterday's life-threatening risks. The reason is simple: we use too many antibiotics we don't need. This overuse of antibiotics is making bacteria stronger and giving rise to superbugs that our antibiotics can't kill.
When people use antibiotics, a physician must prescribe them, but this is not the case when used on animals, which consume most of the antibiotics in meat- and poultry-producing countries like ours. I want to be really clear here. What we object to, and what I think Canadians have a right to expect their federal government to get a better handle on, is not the use of antibiotics to treat sick animals. We don't object to this. Clearly, this is a reasonable thing to do. What needs to change is the widespread and unregulated use of antibiotics on healthy animals to promote their growth. Canada urgently needs stricter regulations around this practice, especially when some of these same antibiotics are so crucial for use in human medicine.
Environmental Defence has been tracking the issue of superbugs for some time. Most recently our concern was piqued after the CBC TV 's Marketplace tested chicken from supermarkets in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver. Alarmingly, CBC found antibiotic-resistant bacteria in two-thirds of the chicken it sampled.
Since the 1960s we've known that the overuse of common medicines can create uncommon bacteria. For example, the Canadian Medical Association Journal called antibiotic-resistant superbugs "one of the most significant public health issues facing Canada and the world today". So this fact is not in dispute. Governments of all political stripes throughout the world agree, and around the world researchers are developing newer, more expensive, and more powerful antibiotics to fight the superbugs.
Yet as governments, including Canada's, continue to educate doctors and patients about the dire risks that overusing antibiotics creates, the biggest users of antibiotics—animals—are largely let off the hook. Here is an astonishing statistic I want to leave with you. In the United States, it is estimated that 75% of all antibiotics used are not used on people; they're used on animals. In Australia, this statistic is 56%.
It's disturbing that the Canadian public doesn't know with any precision what the similar statistic would be for Canada. And the reason for this is you don't need a prescription and you don't need oversight by veterinarians. The industry is largely free to shovel as many antibiotics as it likes into animal feed.
And this is not a small industry. About 20 animals are slaughtered each year--