Health Committee on March 8th, 2011

[The Acting Chair, Conservative, Tim Uppal]

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Standing Committee on Health, meeting number 54.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we are studying antibiotics and livestock.

We have witnesses here today. The witnesses from the Canadian Animal Health Institute are Jean Szkotnicki, president, and Dr. John Prescott. From the Canadian Cattlemen's Association we have John Masswohl, director, and Dr. Reynold Bergen. From the Canadian Pork Council we have Dawn Lawrence, national coordinator. From the Chicken Farmers of Canada we have Mike Dungate and Dr. Leigh Rosengren. From Environmental Defence we have Rick Smith, executive director. And from Pew Charitable Trusts we have Dr. Gail Hansen.

We will allow each organization about a five-minute opening session before the questions.

We will begin with the Canadian Animal Health Institute.

[Jean Szkotnicki, President, Canadian Animal Health Institute]

Chair, committee members, and guests, I am pleased to be here today representing the companies that manufacture and distribute animal medications.

Animal medications are intended to keep animals healthy, and they have a secondary role in limiting human exposure to zoonotic diseases, diseases that can be transferred from animals to humans. Many of the companies I represent have a human side to their business, so it goes without question that while our members want the medications they develop to remain effective for a long time, they also do not want to develop antimicrobials that would compromise or jeopardize the effectiveness of the animal medications that they develop for the human side of the industry.

Joining me here today is Dr. John Prescott, a professor of pathobiology at the Ontario Veterinary College in Guelph, Ontario. He joins me since he's an expert in the area of bacteriology and will address any technical questions arising from the committee members. He certainly has had a long-term interest in this area, and he has been a part of many of the discussions that have occurred here in Canada and internationally for many years.

Topics that I will be discussing include the role of the veterinary drugs directorate, a division of Health Canada, in doing pre-market assessment of our products; and post-marketing controls by veterinarians in the veterinary drugs directorate of the Canadian Public Health Agency as well as by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. I will also talk about the size of the animal health industry and about agriculture's contribution to resistance.

One control I won't be talking about is producer quality assurance programs, the farm-to-fork programs, because I know my colleagues around the table will be discussing those.

VDD, within Health Canada, has pre-marketing controls over the antimicrobials sold in Canada for use in companion and production animals. The VDD review process involves examination of every aspect of a drug from human and animal safety to trials demonstrating a drug's quality and efficacy.

In my formal brief you can see a diagram that briefly outlines the review process. I want to draw your attention to the fact that it's thorough and stringent, and the important part of the review is the human safety component, which ensures that no harmful residues of drugs enter the food chain. There is also an assessment of the potential impact of resistant bacteria being ingested by humans from animal products because of the use of antimicrobials in food-animal production. There is a difference between residues and residue avoidance in antimicrobial resistance.

VDD approves drugs for four uses: the treatment of animals infected with disease, the prevention of disease within herds and flocks, the control of diseases in the case of outbreaks within a herd or flock, and, lastly, the enhancement of growth and feed efficiency.

Many think that in-feed use is equivalent to growth promotion. That is really not the case. It confuses a drug's use with its route of administration. All four uses, including therapeutic use, can be administered via feed or water, and this in many cases is the only practical way to administer medication to large herds and flocks.

The VDD regulates every aspect of labelling, including the species it is intended for, the use, the dosage, and the warnings and cautions. Extra label provisions do exist for the use of antimicrobials whereby the veterinarian directs the use of a medication under the situation of having a valid veterinary client-patient relationship.

Post-marketing controls also exist beyond the VDD. Veterinarian-directed use of antimicrobials is a fact of life, and most new antimicrobials are prescription. Due to concerns about antimicrobial resistance, I would point out that the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association has developed prudent-use guidelines for the use of antimicrobials in food-animal medicine. It is very much a concern of the veterinary profession. The monitoring for adverse events is an ongoing effort of the veterinary drugs directorate within Health Canada.

The public health agency looks toward evaluating trends on the use of medication and for resistance trends in food, animals, and humans. Last, CFIA tests to ensure no harmful residues enter the food chain.

I just wanted to point out that we have limited growth in the animal health industry. There was a 1.1% increase in the total kilograms of active antimicrobials distributed from 2008 to 2009 by our members. Total sales of medications in 2009 amounted to $590 million, and that compares to $21 billion on the human side. Meanwhile, growth on the human side has doubled from 2000 to 2009. That's in sales.

There's no question that antimicrobial resistance is a serious public health threat. It is a complex matter, with no one solution. A 2000 survey published by a group of medical experts estimated that the animal contribution to overall human resistance problems is less than 4%. That small proportion was attributed to the transfer of resistant bacteria from food to humans following use of antimicrobials in food animal production. In my presentation I outlined the chain of events that would have to be traversed by bacteria to move from animals to humans.

In closing, the animal health industry and animal agriculture, along with the veterinary profession, take the issue of antimicrobial resistance very seriously. Discussions on the issue have been occurring within the sector for decades, and measures have been taken to drive prudent and judicious use of antimicrobials.

Thank you.

[The Acting Chair, Conservative, Tim Uppal]

Thank you very much.

We usually give about five or six minutes per organization, but I understand there was some miscommunication, so if the committee will allow I'm going to allow Dr. Prescott a few minutes for his presentation.

Dr. Prescott.

[Dr. John Prescott, Professor, Ontario Veterinary College, University of Guelph; Representative, Canadian Animal Health Institute]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I won't say too much, but I will draw the attention of the committee to the 2002 Health Canada report called Uses of Antimicrobials in Food Animals in Canada: Impact on Resistance and Human Health. This was an absolutely outstanding report, which involved considerable work and effort from many people across the country. It made 38 recommendations, including the establishment of CCARs, Canadian Committee on Antimicrobial Resistance. Most of the recommendations have not been acted on. These recommendations included key things like making antibiotics veterinary prescription only, getting rid of own-use and active pharmaceutical ingredient importation issues, prohibiting extra-label use of antibiotics for certain important public health issues, and so on.

I certainly think it would be of great interest to look again at those recommendations, because I think we can improve how we use antibiotics in animals to try to establish national priorities and put one person in charge of the issue of antibiotic resistance in animals and its relationship to humans, as well as antibiotic resistance in human pathogens generally.

Currently, I think nobody in the federal government is in charge, just the resistant bacteria.

Thank you.

[The Acting Chair, Conservative, Tim Uppal]

Thank you. You will have an opportunity during the question period.

We will now have comments from the Canadian Cattlemen's Association.

[John Masswohl, Director, Government and International Relations, Canadian Cattlemen's Association]

Mr. Chairman, we had prepared our comments to follow the Chicken Farmers, so with your permission we could defer to Mike Dungate and then we'd follow up later. Would that be acceptable?

[The Acting Chair, Conservative, Tim Uppal]

Okay.

Chicken Farmers of Canada.

[Mike Dungate, Executive Director, Chicken Farmers of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for that accommodation.

Thank you, members of the committee, for allowing Chicken Farmers of Canada to present before you today on judicious use of antibiotics in livestock production.

Chicken Farmers of Canada is a national organization that represents the 2,800 chicken farmers in Canada and the Canadian chicken industry. I'm joined today by Dr. Leigh Rosengren. She is an independent veterinary epidemiologist with ten years of experience. She has worked for governments and industry on these issues of research and issues of antibiotic resistance.

I'm going to focus my comments today. You have our submission, but I'm going to focus down on five key points: some misconceptions that are out there with antibiotic use; CFC's support for government regulation and monitoring; CFC's support for judicious use of antibiotics; an outline of the five-point plan we follow in terms of addressing antimicrobial use and resistance; and finally a couple of recommendations, if I might, for the committee.

Before I move on to our policies, I think it's important that we address the elephant in the room, as it were: a CBC Marketplace episode that aired recently, which was designed by its nature to be sensationalistic. However, as such it painted an inaccurate and incomplete picture of the Canadian chicken industry, production, and antibiotic use and resistance. It certainly did not provide a factual or a scientific basis from which government can or should derive policy or options.

I just want to give you a couple of examples. While it was not expressly stated, viewers were left with the impression that the cases presented in the show of human antibiotic resistance were the result of eating chicken. No connection was made, and there is no connection there.

Second, viewers were left with the impression that all antibiotic resistance found in chickens is because of antibiotic use at the farm. As was stated by my colleagues, this is a complex area. Bacteria are endemic, and there are numerous sources. The CBC test results found resistance to antibiotics that are not used in poultry production in Canada. They found resistance to more antibiotics than would be given to a chicken flock. They reported on resistances to antibiotics that have nothing to do with drug use. For example, salmonella and e.coli have a natural resistance with erythromycin, when that drug was never designed for that use, and would never be prescribed for that use.

Third, contrary to what was repeated on the show, the government does have control over antibiotic approvals, it does have control over monitoring and use, and the chicken industry does report on the use of antibiotics.

These examples, and there are more, describe how the episode was misleading and shouldn't be the basis for government policy going forward.

In terms of government regulations, my colleagues here have already outlined the approval processes of Health Canada, the veterinary drugs directorate, and CFIA, so I won't go into that further. It's important, however, to note that all chicken farmers are required by federal regulation to report on the use of antibiotics before the flock is sent to a processing plant. CFIA veterinarians verify these reports and determine that antibiotics are used properly. Any chicken failing this investigation is not allowed to enter the food system.

Taking a further step, Canada has a leading edge surveillance program in the Public Health Agency of Canada's CIPARS, which is internationally respected and is an important component in government oversight and in developing public policy.

On judicious use, CFC has a clear policy. We approve judicious use of antibiotics that have been approved by Health Canada. Antibiotic use in chicken is for the treatment of birds to prevent disease and to prevent potential food safety problems. Antibiotics play a key role in ensuring that only healthy birds enter the food chain for consumption.

Antibiotics are a critical issue for us in terms of consumer trust. Without consumer trust, we don't have an industry. So anything but judicious use would be unacceptable.

I think it's also important to note that a significant amount of the drugs we use on a preventative basis are what are called class 4 drugs, or ionophores, and they are the types of drugs that are of little importance for human medicine. They are the preferred antibiotics we want to move to in terms of ensuring we are keeping those antibiotics that are of importance for human medicine and their efficacy in place.

In terms of the five-point plan that CFC has put in place, we have an on-farm food safety program where all farms have to report mandatory recording and reporting. This is in addition to what they have to provide to the CFIA veterinarian. They are audited on an annual basis. We have 97% of the farms in Canada certified on this program.

Second, we are working with CIPARS on surveillance. We've designed an on-farm surveillance program. Right now there's only on-farm surveillance in hogs and in cattle. We would like to see that extended to the farm level on poultry and we would look for that to be done. We're not waiting for that to be done. We've done some research with the University of Guelph in order to do a pre-pilot project.

Third, we are actively funding research. We've spent almost $5.1 million over the last several years in terms of research into probiotics, developing vaccines, and alternatives.

[The Acting Chair, Conservative, Tim Uppal]

Thank you, Mr. Dungate. You will have some opportunity during the question period to add more comments.

Now we will go to the Canadian Cattlemen's Association.

[John Masswohl]

Thank you again for the accommodation earlier, and thank you for the invitation to appear and present before the committee. The Canadian Cattlemen's Association is always willing to appear before members and provide information on various things that are going on in our industry.

I'm going to make a few brief comments, but since I'm not a scientist myself, to the extent that we can keep the subject matter today focused on science, our comments will come primarily from our science director, Dr. Reynold Bergen.

While I'm not a scientist, like members of Parliament, I spent a lot of my time trying to distill various pieces of technical information into good policy. I hope that is the spirit of what we're trying to do here today.

As we do that, I think we can all be assured that food safety is something that cattle producers take very seriously. We're keenly aware that consumers insist that the food they eat be safe. They're purchasing it to feed to their families, to their children, and they have every right to expect that it be safe.

Canadian cattle producers are committed to ensuring that the beef they produce is safe for all consumers, and indeed we are feeding our own families. I have a 14-year-old daughter and a 12-year-old son of my own. You can believe that we eat our share of beef in our house. I have complete confidence in the safety of the beef that I put on my own dining room table.

It's also important to recognize that beef production in Canada operates in a competitive environment. Beef purchasers in both the Canadian and the export markets make buying decisions based on a number of factors. Our daily challenge is to ensure that those consumers have confidence that what we produce is safe and that we produce it at a competitive price.

Over-regulation is a disservice to both the consuming public and to the hard-working people who produce the food. Having the right policies and regulatory operating environment in place is the first step. Ensuring that cattle producers are well trained to follow those policies and adopt good practices is the next step. For that reason, we've developed an extensive on-farm food safety program. We call it verified beef production. Under that program we provide training to producers so that they have all the latest knowledge to produce wholesome and healthy beef.

I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Bergen to speak specifically to the anti-microbial issues, but I would also note that we have Ms. Terry Grajczyk in the room as well. Terry is our national manager for the verified beef production program that I mentioned.

[Dr. Reynold Bergen, Science Director, Beef Cattle Research Council, Canadian Cattlemen's Association]

Thank for the invitation to come here today.

I couldn't agree more with John's introductory comments and those of the previous speakers that producing safe and nutritious food is the most important thing that Canada's cattle producers do.

It was pointed out earlier, but I'll repeat it: livestock producers and cattle producers use antimicrobial products very strategically.

Ionophores are the main antimicrobial that the beef industry uses. Ionophores are not used in human medicine at all. As a result of that, eliminating the use of ionophores in beef production would not halt or slow the development of antimicrobial resistance and would not contribute to our goal of producing safe and nutritious food.

With this in mind, the CCA developed the verified beef production program to uphold consumer confidence in Canadian beef. This is a HACCP-based on-farm food safety program, and it has received technical approval from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

VBP promotes prudent use of veterinary products so that the right product is used to treat the right disease or condition at the right dose, following the right administration route, following the right course of treatment and the correct withdrawal times, and ensuring that leftover product, containers, and what not are disposed of properly.

Finally, one of the most important steps is documenting that all of these steps were actually followed for every animal that was treated. Following label or veterinary instructions regarding the use of these antimicrobials is an important safeguard against the development of antimicrobial resistance.

Preventing antimicrobial resistance is also important to Canada's cattle producers, simply because we want to make sure that these antimicrobials continue to be effective. When antimicrobial resistance develops, the product isn't effective any more. Losing the effectiveness of those tools is something we can't afford to have happen.

Producers use these antimicrobials in a targeted manner because they're costly and also because they need these products to be effective. Cattle feeders use sophisticated and quite often computerized animal health management software systems under the direction of, or in conjunction with, specialized veterinarians.

The dosing systems that are used are accurate to the millimetre and dosages are based on individual animal weight, so the individual animal is getting the right dose of antimicrobial that it needs to address the situation.

[The Acting Chair, Conservative, Tim Uppal]

I'll ask you to wrap up, because you're at the end of your time.

[Dr. Reynold Bergen]

CCA is also supporting the CIPARS program and is funding considerable research into the issue of antimicrobial resistance as well.

With that, I thank you.

[The Acting Chair, Conservative, Tim Uppal]

Thank you.

We'll now hear from the Canadian Pork Council.

[Dawn Lawrence, National Coordinator, CQA Program, Nova Scotia, Canadian Pork Council]

Good afternoon.

I would like to thank you for the invitation to appear this afternoon.

The Canadian Pork Council is a national association representing the interests of Canada's 7,000 hog producers. The Canadian pork industry recognizes the vital importance of using practices that promote the health and well-being of the animals under its care and, through this, the safety of pork.

To support this commitment to food safety, the Canadian Pork Council launched the CQA program in 1998, an on-farm food safety program based upon the principles of HACCP and designed to assist producers in the development of production protocols to address potential food safety risks that could be introduced at the farm.

The use of medications is an important area of potential risk at the farm level. As such, a significant part of the CQA program addresses the use of these products. The program also includes a specific drug use policy requiring that only products approved for use in food-producing animals in Canada may be used.

Producers are required to have a veterinary prescription for all schedule F, part 1 prescription drugs, for extra-label use of any product used in that manner, and they are encouraged to consult with a veterinarian for all other medication use. Any other medication use would fall under the over-the-counter products. These requirements are to ensure that medications are being used effectively to manage herd health.

Additionally, producers are required to develop a medication and vaccine usage plan and maintain treatment records. Each of these items is included in the audit of the on-farm food safety program.

Canadian livestock producers have available to them a toolbox of items that allow them to care for the animals they raise. Like other skilled tradesmen, producers are committed to proper use and maintenance of their tools, thus ensuring that they continue to be useful for years to come.

Producers are responsible for growing a healthy pig destined for the food chain, but they also rely on the expertise of veterinarians for support and education and upon the veterinary drugs directorate and Canadian Food Inspection Agency to ensure correct approval and oversight procedures for medications included in their toolbox.

On-farm food safety programs, like CQA and the others mentioned here this afternoon, provide producers with support in the form of educational tools. They require consultation with a veterinarian on the use of medications and require a regular audit process. The CQA program requires an annual on-farm audit, during which the producer's on-farm food safety system is evaluated by an outside party. The program itself has been reviewed for technical soundness by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and the Canadian Pork Council works with the CFIA and Health Canada on many issues, including the use of antibiotics.

Antimicrobials are an invaluable tool in the maintenance of animal health. At the same time, they are a concern in that they can contribute to the development of antimicrobial resistance. The focus of our industry is on using these products prudently.

As of 2009, approximately 94% of Canadian market hogs were sourced from CQA-registered farms. The high participation rate is a result of Canadian processors making it a requirement for producers shipping to their facilities to be on the CQA program. The program has become a condition of sale to most processing plants and an integral part of the industry commitment to quality and safety.

[The Acting Chair, Conservative, Tim Uppal]

Thank you.

We will now hear from Environmental Defence.

[Rick Smith, Executive Director, Environmental Defence]

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--

[The Acting Chair, Conservative, Tim Uppal]

Could I ask you to wrap up quickly?

[Rick Smith]

Thank you.

About 20 animals are slaughtered each year, per Canadian. So to the extent that the government focuses on overuse of antibiotics in people, efforts to curb superbugs are doomed to failure.

Just to wrap up, frankly, I think the question before this committee is simply this: Does the unnecessary use of antibiotics on a healthy animal like a chicken trump the necessary use of antibiotics for a sick child?

Thank you very much for your deliberations today, and I look forward to your questions.

[The Acting Chair, Conservative, Tim Uppal]

Thank you.

And now we will hear from Pew Charitable Trusts.

[Dr. Gail Hansen, Senior Officer, Pew Charitable Trusts]

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 different perspectives for over 30 years. I was a state public health veterinarian and epidemiologist with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, and with a local health department. Before that, I was in private veterinary practice. And before that--actually before I got into veterinary school--I actually worked for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for a short time when they were first looking at eliminating antibiotics from animal feeds as growth promotants.

The Pew human health and industrial farming section partners with public health leaders, with other veterinarians, with agricultural interests, and with consumer groups to preserve the effectiveness of antibiotics by phasing out the overuse of the drugs in food animal production.

Antibiotic resistance from feeding low levels of antibiotics to animals is real and is here, as you've heard. Antibiotics are legally available and they're readily available over the counter and are fed to healthy animals. These are the same drugs that are used in human medicine to fight disease. The antibiotic use in food animals in the United States and Canada is very similar, as is the lack of monitoring the use of other drugs and the reporting of the drugs.

It's also very similar that we are seeing an upward trend in antibiotic resistance in bacteria both in animals and in people, and we are seeing that all over the world. And there is an upward trend in the number of bacteria that are becoming resistant to the antibiotics we have on hand.

The CBC report from last month that found bacteria in about three-quarters of the tested chickens, and all the bacteria being resistant to at least one antibiotic and several of them being resistant to multiple antibiotics was not a surprise to me. In the United States, certainly in 2008, nearly all of the chicken that was tested was contaminated with at least one bacteria. And if one of the bacteria is a salmonella, which we find in about half of our chickens, 38% of those salmonellae are resistant to three or more antibiotics.

So it's not really an overstatement to say that antibiotics are overused in industrial farming to the detriment of human health. Animals are fed low levels of antibiotics for growth promotion and in the absence of disease. This is to compensate for some of the overcrowded and sometimes unsanitary conditions and is used as a fix for good practices. And when bacteria come in contact with low levels of antibiotics, it makes it easier for them to become resistant to antibiotics, the “what doesn't kill you makes you stronger” kind of thing. That resistance gets transferred to people. Ultimately, then, the antibiotics we've used to treat disease don't work for animals or for people.

The CIPARS, the Canadian Integrated Program for Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance, published in 2010, in a peer-reviewed journal, that they found a rise in ceftiofur resistance in a common salmonella in both chickens and people. Ceftiofur is an antibiotic that's routinely injected into chicken eggs just before they're hatched. That drug, ceftiofur, is nearly identical to ceftriaxone, a drug used to treat children and pregnant women.

In Quebec the hatcheries voluntarily stopped that practice, and when they stopped injecting the ceftiofur they saw a great drop in the resistance of salmonella to ceftiofur, both in chickens and in humans. When they lifted that ban a little bit, again they started to see a rise in the antibiotic resistance in people and in chickens.

The WHO has looked at fluoroquinolones, which is another antibiotic. You may know it as Cipro. When it was first licensed for human therapy, there was no immediate rise in salmonella resistance seen. But then when the Cipro, or fluoroquinolones, were licensed for use in food animals, the rates of fluoroquinolone-resistant salmonella went up both in animals and in humans.

The good news is that we do have effective alternatives to using a low level of antibiotics for farmers and ranchers. The EU has banned the use of antibiotics as growth promoters in meat and poultry since 2006. And the ban on the antibiotics as growth promoters was followed in subsequent years by substantial decreases in food-borne illness in Europe.

It would seem to me that Canadians deserve the same, and you can do it if you follow the EU's lead, it would seem.

In Denmark they have industrial farms that are very able to efficiently raise pork and poultry without the use of antibiotics except when the animals are sick. The farmers give antibiotics when they're prescribed by a veterinarian for a specific disease only. They found that if they just banned the use of antibiotics for these non-therapeutic uses, it wasn't enough. They had to really work with their veterinarians and others to find some other effective management strategies.

This is a very opportune time, because the WHO has declared April 7, 2011, as World Health Day. The focus this year is on antimicrobial resistance, in an effort to safeguard antibiotics for future generations.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has announced that it will take two significant steps this year to curb the overuse of antibiotics in our food production. First, the FDA is preparing guidance that we're hoping will advise the industry to not use antibiotics for growth promotion and other non-therapeutic purposes, and to not feed antibiotics to healthy animals. Second, the agency is looking at implementing a ban on the off-label use of a drug called ceftiofur in animals. That drug is vital in treating pregnant women, children, and cancer patients. We can't lose the ability of antibiotics to treat us when we're sick, and certainly not because we're feeding them to healthy animals.

Thank you. I'm open for questions.

[The Acting Chair, Conservative, Tim Uppal]

Thank you all for your opening statements.

We will now go to questions by members. Our first round will be for seven minutes, led by Mr. Dosanjh.

[Ujjal Dosanjh, Liberal, Vancouver South, BC]

Thank you all for making your presentations.

I actually don't even know where to begin.

Mr. Smith and Ms. Hansen have expressed a very serious indictment of practices in the industry, such as feeding antibiotics to healthy animals, and the overuse of unprescribed antibiotics. Obviously it is a serious situation in the country if you can find some presence of antibiotic resistance in two-thirds of the chickens sampled across the country, and some of them have up to seven or eight antibiotics present.

So is the industry prepared to voluntarily--because we don't have a law at this point--stop using antibiotics, at least on healthy chickens and other healthy animals?

[Mike Dungate]

Thank you, Mr. Dosanjh, for your question.

Let's start this way. As I said, Chicken Farmers of Canada believe that judicious use is the way to go. So do we just want to measure antibiotics by tonnes and reduce in that sense, or do we want to make sure we are moving away from those antibiotics that are of human health importance? You've heard from all of the industry that the drugs--

[Ujjal Dosanjh, Liberal, Vancouver South, BC]

You haven't answered the question.