Page 9 - National Poultry Newspaper

India bans the use of a
human-critical antibiotic
in poultry farms
THE Indian government has banned the use of a ‘last hope’ antibiotic on farms.
The Bureau of Investiga- tive Journalism reported the Indian government has banned the use of a last hope antibiotic on farms to try to halt the spread of some of the world’s most deadly superbugs, after a Bureau investigation re- vealed it was being widely used to fatten livestock.
Colistin is one of the most important antibiotics in human medicine be- cause it is used as a last resort to treat people with infections resistant to al- most all other drugs.
Despite this, for years it has been indiscriminately added to animal feed on Indian farms, breeding deadly bugs.
The use of antibiotics to fatten animals – known as growth promotion – is a major cause of the world’s growing antibiotic resist- ance crisis.
The World Health Or- ganisation says the prac- tice should be banned.
This new ban in India reaches further than just growth promotion.
The Indian Ministry of Health recently issued a notification prohibit- ing the “manufacture, sale and distribution of the drug colistin and its formulations for food-pro- ducing animals, poultry, aqua farming and animal feed supplements” be- cause such use is “likely to involve risk to human beings”.
That means the drug also cannot be used as a veterinary medicine for farm animals.
Colistin can still be pre- scribed on British farms to treat infections, though official records indicate it is rarely used.
The ban follows recom- mendations earlier this year by India’s top drug advisory body, the Drugs Technical Advisory Board, and the National Antimicrobial Resistance Action Plan committee.
Dr Abdul Ghafur, an infectious diseases doctor who advises the commit- tee, said the wording of the ban was very strong and was “the best gazette notification you can ever get”.
He said the ban indicates “the Indian government is convinced colistin is a last resort antibiotic, colistin resistance is increasing in
clinical practice and colis- tin is extensively used in poultry and aqua farming as a growth-promoting agent” and such practice should stop.
An investigation by the Bureau last year showed how colistin was widely used as a growth promoter in India.
Hundreds of tonnes of colistin were shipped to India in 2016, the Bureau found, and the drug was sold by international and domestic pharmaceutical companies without re- quiring a prescription.
The story showed how one of India’s largest poultry companies Ven- ky’s was marketing colis- tin as a growth promoter to farmers.
In India, Venky’s sup- plies supermarkets and fast food outlets like KFC, McDonald’s and Pizza Hut.
The fast food brands said no growth-promoting antibiotics were used in chickens supplied to them.
The discovery of a colistin-resistant gene that can pass between bacte- ria, conferring resistance to bugs never exposed to the drug, sent shockwaves through the medical world in 2015.
It will likely accelerate the spread of resistance to colistin, further boost- ed by the rampant use of the antibiotic on farms in many countries.
Scientists believe the gene originated in bacte- ria in Chinese livestock, but it has since been found across five continents.
Tim Walsh, a profes- sor at Cardiff University whose research team dis- covered the mobile colis- tin-resistant gene, said the Indian ban was a welcome step but monitoring and enforcing it was crucial.
Walsh has been instru- mental in working with governments to slow the spread of resistance.
“The ban shows an ele- ment of commitment by the central Indian govern- ment, but whether this has any traction at state level or local level remains to be seen,” he said.
“But even if its impact is not what we might hope for, at least it’s adding to a message that we need to once and for all separate those drugs that we use in animals from those that we use in humans.”
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National Poultry Newspaper, August 2019 – Page 9
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