MRSA Action UK - The Threat from Superbugs in our food

Monday, 11, Aug 2008 12:00

The issue of Superbugs in our Hospitals and in our Community has far reaching consequences for not only today’s generations, but more importantly for future generations who will have to live with our inaction on this subject. The ubiquitous use of antibiotics over the last 60 years has brought us to the position we find ourselves in today.

There is much hype of the fact that we now have a problem with antibiotic resistance even to most common infections because of our over use of these magic drugs in trying to cure the most basic of complaints. However what has not been published in the same manner is our over reliance of antibiotic use in the farming industry, primarily the livestock and poultry industries. Humans only account for 50% of the total use of antibiotics in the world today, the remaining 50% of antibiotic use is in the livestock and poultry industries around the world according to the Department of Health report “The path of least resistance” 1998, and this is of a major concern to MRSA Action UK. Whilst the Government and the Department of Health inform us that Healthcare Infections are a world wide problem they have said nothing of the disaster that is slowly creeping up on us with regard to the problem of the over use of these antibiotics in livestock.

Our Charity has consistently campaigned and raised the issue of the over use of antibiotics at conferences with healthcare officials and history has taught us that we ignore the lessons from the past at our peril. In the 1980’s we had the BSE fiasco where we were informed that there was little chance of the problem that was affecting cattle being passed on to humans. How history has shown us just how wrong we can be with nature, when we have seen the effects this terrible affliction had on humans in the form of the human variant CJD. We now have a very similar situation arising with feed stock given to animals that is heavily dosed with antibiotics and which can transfer itself to humans therefore building up possible resistance to the common antibiotics used in humans to fight infections.

We are already beginning to see the mutation of MRSA transferring itself from pigs to humans and a variant MRSA bacteria appearing called MRSA (ST398). There are other bacteria that are progressively building up resistance to the most common antibiotics we have to fight infections such as (extended-spectrum beta-lactamases) ESBL Ecoli which is spreading to both farm animals and humans and causes over 30,000 food poisoning episodes in this country alone and over 4000 are thought to die because of the failure to respond to antibiotic treatment.

Our Government and the Department of Health is now adopting a policy of informing our Doctors that they need to be more frugal with the issuing of antibiotics to the population, and that unless an antibiotic is needed they should refrain from prescribing them unless absolutely necessary and our Charity is in agreement with this policy. We have to preserve the present stock of antibiotics for future generations and unless we do, we will leave those generations with no effective means to combat even the simplest of infections, we owe this to our children in that they inherit a world safer than the one passed on from our parents.

In contrast, in the farming livestock industry the same pressures applied to our Doctors to be more frugal with antibiotics have not been applied to veterinary surgeons and farmers in the UK. Large quantities of antibiotics are still given to animals as a precautionary reason and not to fight or combat specific infections in animals, and they are increasingly being given drugs that are critically classed as important in human medicine because of our farming methods.

As a Charity we fully understand that the use of antibiotics in intensive livestock production is paramount but we feel there needs to be the same sea change in this industry with the use of antibiotics as there is now in our medical health service because failure to do so will leave us with very serious problems in the future.

As a Charity that supports those who have been affected by Healthcare Infections we are calling on our Government to have, not only a review, but a public inquiry that will pull together all those who use antibiotics from the Doctors and Veterinary surgeons to the farming community but it must also encompass those countries around the world because failure to do so will have its own consequences as a country that imports large stocks of meat. Failure to ignore the warnings on antibiotic use will impact on all of us in the future and leave future generations a legacy they will not forgive us for.

Derek Butler

Chair

MRSA Action UK

07762 741114

derek.butler@mrsaactionuk.net

http://mrsaactionuk.net