Filenews 29 June 2022 - by Nikoletta Kourousi
Cyprus is the "champion" in the use of antimicrobial preparations in animal husbandry, with all that this entails on the issue of antimicrobial resistance, due to the reckless use of antibiotics, according to the latest Report of the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
The findings of this study occupied the work of the conference "ONE – Health, Environment, Society – Conference 2022", which took place last week (21-24 June) in Brussels and at which important issues of concern to the EU, such as food and feed safety and the Green Deal, were put on the table.
Therefore, according to the latest relevant report of the EMA (November 2021), in the context of the surveillance of the Veterinary Antimicrobial Consumption (ESVAC) project, which presents data on the sales of antibiotics for livestock use for the years 2019 and 2020, it is shown that the use of antibiotics in Cypriot livestock farming is at very high levels.
Specifically, as illustrated in Table 4, the use of antimicrobial preparations per livestock unit (the EU livestock unit is called PCU) in Cyprus was 393.9 mg/PCU and is presented as the largest by far and well above the average (89.00 mg/PCU) of the 31 countries.
On the other side are the Scandinavian countries Norway (2.3), Sweden (11.1) and Iceland (3.8), which record very low rates of use of antimicrobial preparations per livestock unit.
This report shows the degree of commitment to sustainable agriculture and responsible use of antimicrobials in the European Union, the aim of which is to halve the use of antibiotics in livestock farming by 2030. In particular, the EU, in its flagship food policy, the Farm to Fork Strategy, has set itself the target of halving EU sales of antimicrobials for farm animals by 2030.
The European Commission has identified the fight against antimicrobial resistance as a priority, with reducing the reckless use of antibiotics seen as the best way to tackle it, since their excessive use in recent years - not only in humans but also in animal health care - has led some bacteria to develop antimicrobial resistance, which means that antibiotics become less effective against infections.
More generally, however, according to this report, the great efforts made by the animal health sector in recent years - which include the implementation of best practices, which improve animal health and welfare and minimise diseases - seem to be paying off, with a 43.2% decrease in total sales of veterinary antimicrobials; between the years 2011 and 2020, in the 25 countries, across Europe, that provided data during this period.
A significant decrease was observed in some of the countries with the highest sales, while another positive element was the downward trend observed in critically important antibiotics, classified by the EMA in AMEG Category B[1], especially the sales of polymyxins (colistin), which decreased by 76.5% between 2011-2020.
