Contract Review Use of Antibiotics in Animals and Animal Feedsan Overview

Before an antibiotic can be legally marketed in Australia it must be evaluated by the National Registration Authority for safety to the public, the operator, the environment and the target species. The efficacy of the product, its justification for use and the residue profile are also evaluated. Residue and trade issues are assessed and appropriate controls and labelling applied. While management, housing and husbandry practices are improving and disease control is depending more upon the use of vaccines, there is still a need for the use of antibiotics in animals to control disease to satisfy animal welfare, animal production and human health prevention concerns. The use of antibiotics for growth promotion, while seen as an important production measure, is controversial, particularly in Europe where hormonal growth promotants are banned. There is a major concern that the use of antibiotics in animals is leading to the transfer of antimicrobial resistance from animal to man. Sweden has had a ban on the use of growth promotion in animal feed for nearly ten years and several other European countries are advocating a total ban on the use of antibiotics as growth promoters in animals. Current and longstanding NRA practice is that before new antibiotics are registered for animal use in Australia, they are evaluated by the National Health and Medical Research Council’s Working Party on Antibiotics (WPA) (previously known as the Expert Panel on Antibiotics), in particular for their potential to transfer microbial resistance from animals to man. Australia has adopted a conservative approach to the use of antibiotics in animal feed, adhering to the main principles of the Report of the Swann Committee (1969). These are that permission to supply and use drugs without prescription in animal feed should be restricted to antibiotics which: