Evidence of meeting #78 for Health in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was animals.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Chair, Prudent Use Guidelines Expert Advisory Group, Canadian Veterinary Medical Association
Thank you. I apologize for not being able to answer your question in French.
Liberal
Chair, Prudent Use Guidelines Expert Advisory Group, Canadian Veterinary Medical Association
I don't personally like the term “over-prescribing”, but I think we have a significant amount of unnecessary use. Over-prescribing implies almost an intentional effort to put more drugs into an animal than what you might need. I think there are circumstances where we have habitually or traditionally used antibiotics because we've always done it that way. Maybe we need to look at it and we can reduce it.
Again, to the growth promotion claims, the uses are there for growth, but they will go away, and that will cause a significant reduction. That probably is over-prescribing. They weren't prescribed; we were just using them.
I think there's a good case to be made that we have to ask, every time we use an antibiotic, why we're using it. Is it really needed? Is there something else we can do instead to prevent the need for that drug and move forward? But I don't think we have rampant over-prescribing per se.
Liberal
Ramez Ayoub Liberal Thérèse-De Blainville, QC
I would like to comment on your answer.
Have we not reached that point because, in the past, either people did not worry about it, or they produced at a lower cost and as quickly as possible to get the product to table? Is there not a link? Why can we no longer ignore the scientific phenomenon that keeps increasing and to which we must respond? Have we reached that point because there was pressure and bad prescribing or use habits? We talked about education earlier. Is it because of this whole phenomenon that we have reached this point now?
It could be Mr. Landals, Mr. Leech, or Mr. McEwen.
National Program Manager, Food Safety and Animal Welfare, Chicken Farmers of Canada
I think there's a difference between over-prescription in how antibiotics are being used and looking at the risk factors that we now know of, which are being highlighted through the World Health Organization and the OIE. Understanding the potential crisis that is front us, what do we do about it? How do we operate differently on both the human health side and the agriculture side of the equation?
I think that's the greatest reason that we're now looking at it. We understand that there is a risk, and we need to make sure that, from a production standpoint, we're taking ourselves out of the equation.
Professor, Ontario Veterinary College, University of Guelph, As an Individual
Maybe I can add to that.
Part of your question is how we got to the place we are now, where there seems to be so much use. Part of the reason was that antibiotics were such effective agents for controlling, preventing, and treating diseases that they were widely adopted in animal medicine, as they were in human medicine, especially before resistance problems started to diminish that.
The other big factor in veterinary medicine, which differs from human medicine, is that their widespread use for growth promotion was a major factor that led to the high volumes of use there. That then tipped over into disease prevention because it's thought that they do both things.
In the early years, it was demonstrated that they had about a 10% benefit to the rate of growth and efficiency of feed. That has diminished a lot—almost down to 1% now—and they were relatively cheap, so they were a cheap and effective mechanism for enhancing production. I think those are the major drivers for how we got to the place we are at today.
Liberal
Ramez Ayoub Liberal Thérèse-De Blainville, QC
I'm not sure if you will have the time to answer my last question, but it pertains to the influence of the antibiotics industry. We have not talked about that. I have not heard that, but no doubt there is an influence. There is an influence as regards antibiotics for human use, so I imagine it also exists in the agriculture sector.
Antibiotics are an industry; it is about selling medication. What influence or pressure does that bring to bear? I have not heard anything about that. I don't know if you have anything to say on that subject.
Professor, Ontario Veterinary College, University of Guelph, As an Individual
I think it needs to be said that without a pharmaceutical industry, we would be nowhere in terms of having antibiotics. They're a critically important part of that. We need to have a supply of antibiotics to do the good things that they do. Having said that, I think the pharmaceutical industry and other parties have had a vested interest in promoting these products. That sometimes conflicts with efforts to curtail their use.
One of the tricky aspects of stewardship is reaching the right balance with that. This includes that industry, the veterinary profession, and the farming industries as well.
November 9th, 2017 / 4:55 p.m.
Conservative
Dave Van Kesteren Conservative Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Mr. Ayoub was really zeroing in on what this is all about.
I think we had forgotten through all the other questions that this started out as a method for rapid growth or increased growth. So that I understand this correctly, you're saying that's really not necessary anymore. They've figured out new methods to—
Before you answer that, I have to ask you another question. Are antibiotics affecting the human population? Are we becoming resistant to the same antibiotics? Is that the challenge for us?
Professor, Ontario Veterinary College, University of Guelph, As an Individual
In a quick answer to your first point about the reduction in the beneficial effect to growth and feed efficiency with growth promoters, it's pretty well documented now that there has been a reduction from about 5% to 10% down to about 2%.
We don't really know for sure why that is. It's thought to be in part because we now have better production systems. We have better animal management. We have better biosecurity. We have better systems to prevent the spread of disease in animal populations. We have better quality feed and better feeding regimens. All of those things, plus the emergence of resistance, may also diminish the effectiveness of these growth promoters.
The second question—which, with all of my talking, I've kind of forgotten—is whether people are getting resistant to these. It's the bacteria that are getting resistant; bacteria in people, animals, and in the environment.
Conservative
Dave Van Kesteren Conservative Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON
My next question is about the need for antibiotics in the animal population. Is it because we've adopted these factory methods of farming, the close quarters of animals, the way we finish off beef, or the way we finish off chickens? Is that the problem? In the past, did we have more room for growth? Did we not have the rapid growth? Is that the reason we are using these antibiotics?
Chair, Prudent Use Guidelines Expert Advisory Group, Canadian Veterinary Medical Association
That may be part of it. We use antibiotics because animals get sick. In the extensive agricultural circumstances of cows out in the pasture, they get sick as well, and they need antibiotics, but the volume used is not nearly as much because you're dealing with a single individual animal. You get more intensive circumstances if you have larger volumes of animals. Consequently there is a tendency to treat the whole group of animals, so the use goes up. I don't think it's fair to blame it entirely on modern agricultural practices.
Conservative
Dave Van Kesteren Conservative Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON
We're getting better. We do a better job at cleaning our barns and disinfecting, but there is that reality because of the close quarters.
I don't have much time, so I want to ask another question.
Somebody mentioned this and it just made me remember that my father-in-law was in the milk industry, and they used to do a bacterial count. His was always low and he would always say,“You know, the guy down the road has filthy farming techniques and his are always high, but it really doesn't matter.” They would, of course, use pasteurization to correct that problem.
Is that part of the problem too, that not all farmers are maybe quite as diligent in their cleaning techniques?
The second part of my question is if they can do the pasteurization, can we not irradiate meat, so we would take care of that problem too if we are that worried about salmonella? I'm not suggesting it's a good idea, but if we do it with milk, why not do it with meat?
Chair, Prudent Use Guidelines Expert Advisory Group, Canadian Veterinary Medical Association
Well, I think that's partially true. There are two parts to your question, the somatic cell count or the cell count in the milk could come from.... Infection can come from other things. It comes from trauma, bad milking machines, and a number of different indicators. Of course, in the dairy industry they look at that because when it gets too high, that milk is no longer processed into cheese and whatnot, so it is rejected. There is a gradient of what your cell count can be before suddenly you're starting to lose your milk stream.
That is a good example of where you can monitor what's going on. That's not always involving antimicrobial use, but if you have mastitis in a dairy herd then you have a higher incidence of wanting to use dry cow treatment, which increases the use in the herd.
There are ways you can reduce that need for antibiotics through management techniques, for sure.
Conservative
Dave Van Kesteren Conservative Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON
My question about the pasteurization and irradiating meat.... Did you want to answer that, Steve?
National Program Manager, Food Safety and Animal Welfare, Chicken Farmers of Canada
There are two parts to that question. On the irradiation side of things, it's not allowed in Canada. Health Canada has not approved that process for meat products, so that is certainly a regulatory hurdle.
Also, in terms of why antibiotics are used by the neighbour down the road, antibiotics are used to prevent and control disease. There are a lot of reasons for that disease incursion, and there are a lot of reasons bacteria come into a population—into a flock in our case. It can be in the chicks. It's not necessarily management. It can come in from a number of different supply sources coming into the farm, etc. All of those are different, and we see differences in regions and in provinces of the country. All this needs to be handled differently. That's part of the issue, moving forward.
Liberal
Neil Ellis Liberal Bay of Quinte, ON
Thanks for coming in today.
Scott, I wanted to touch on something you said in your 10 minutes. You said alarm bells were going off in the sixties on this. I can't remember the sixties, due to my age, and now we're 50 years later. When this happened in the sixties, was there not any type of preventive...or any of the organizations...?
This will be a two-part question. I commend your pamphlet here on the chicken farmers, but your steps started in 2014. What happened in those 50 years? Did this just happen in the last five years, or 10 years? We're in a panic now.
Professor, Ontario Veterinary College, University of Guelph, As an Individual
I am a history nut, and the history of antibiotic resistance and its control on the animal side is really fascinating. It would probably be a topic for a book someday. It's a situation where there have been periodic crises that have gotten the public's attention, gripped the imagination, been in the press, and led to blue ribbon panel evaluations, scientific investigations, and expert committees. Some of those have resulted in recommendations that were adopted, and others haven't.
I'll give you two examples. In the U.K., there was an outbreak of multidrug-resistant salmonella in calves. It caused a lot of problems in animals and people, and it led to what was called the Swann commission. The history books let students learn about this. The Swann commission recommended that there be a clear separation in the antibiotics used for production purposes, for growth promotion, and those used for therapy in animals and people. In Europe, that was adopted. There were feed additives where antibiotics were used for growth promotion, and other antibiotics were used for therapy in animals and people. That wasn't done in North America and other parts of the world.
A second history lesson is this. In the 1970s, the United States Food and Drug Administration recognized that the issue of overuse of antibiotics in feeds was a public health problem, so the FDA set about to withdraw the approvals of drugs like penicillin and tetracycline in animal feeds for that reason. They went to the U.S. Congress, but there was a lot of lobbying against that by interests on the other side. They were told they couldn't do it until they had a higher standard of proof—better scientific evidence that this was actually taking place. They set about trying to get that, with the National Academy of Sciences, and they came back with good evidence that it was happening, but because of the complexity of antibiotic resistance, it was not as ironclad as it would be for other health problems, so they weren't able to follow through on that.
That has been the story all the way through history. The complicated nature of antimicrobial resistance and the multiple parties that have a role in it have made it difficult to have a coordinated effort to deal with the problem. That's kind of where we are today.
Liberal
Neil Ellis Liberal Bay of Quinte, ON
Mr. Leech, in 2014, was this mandated, or was it your organization saying, “Let's get aboard, start a step, and get rid of the steps we are going through by 2020”?
National Program Manager, Food Safety and Animal Welfare, Chicken Farmers of Canada
It was mandated by our organization. We use the on-farm food safety program to make it mandatory for our producers. The implementation date was May 2014, but looking at the history books, we see that there wasn't ubiquitous use throughout the industry. There were segments that were using category I antibiotics. We had a year-long implementation period, as we are doing now, and during that period we saw people reduce their use and put in different practices.
It's the industry that has done it. I think it's something to behold, in North America and even Europe, that we've been able to use some of the reports coming from surveillance and make these decisions on behalf of the industry.
Liberal
Neil Ellis Liberal Bay of Quinte, ON
As for sources, I'll go back to education and ask whether you have followed up with universities. Obviously, things change in education in veterinarian schools. Looking at your age—and I say that respectfully—I imagine that when a lot of you went to school as veterinarians, this wasn't on the radar screen. Are our universities in line with this as a Canadian factor? Are they in agreement with all the information that's out there? Has that program changed?
I guess what I'm getting at is, for professional updates for veterinarians, who are spread across Canada, are there particular professional days that they have to go through? How do we educate veterinarians so they know? Is that the college? How do you teach an old dog new tricks?
Chair, Prudent Use Guidelines Expert Advisory Group, Canadian Veterinary Medical Association
You asked a number of questions in there. I'll try to answer them.
What's different from when we were trained? Yes, they had invented penicillin when I went to school, so I was familiar with it—I joke about my age as well—but I think we've learned a lot about antibiotics and antimicrobial use. We've learned about treating our patients and about what's best for the animals we're dealing with. I think the difference I see in the education now is that as we become aware and the community becomes aware, the veterinarian students are also being made aware that when they treat an animal, they also have an impact on human health or environmental health. That extension of the logic is the “balance” I mentioned in my presentation. I think that's being taught now in the schools. I think that's coming out.
As for the general veterinarians who are already out there in practice and are not still in school, every province has some degree of mandatory continuing education. Some of the provinces have made it mandatory that they have specific courses on antimicrobial resistance and antimicrobial use. All of the licensing bodies are looking at providing that continuing education for their members.
