Global Health Crisis Could be Averted by Imposing Fee on Non-Human Antibiotic Use: Study

A study recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine proposes a solution to the public health threat linked to the overabundance of antibiotic use in the agriculture and aquaculture industries.

With 80 percent of the antibiotics consumed in the US done so under the auspices of the agriculture and aquaculture industries for increasing food production, the study authors suggest imposing user fees on the non-human use of antibiotics.

Study author Aidan Hollis, a professor of economics at the University of Calgary, said that the myriad ways antibiotics are released into the environment - by being sprayed on fruit trees, and fed to livestock, poultry and farmed fish, for example - has led the bacteria the antibiotics are applied on to evolve.

But amid the veritable flood of antibiotics, resistant pathogens are emerging, resulting in bacteria that are immune to all available treatments, Hollis said in a news release, adding that if the problem goes unchecked, it could lead to a global health crisis.

An attempt to thwart an antibiotic-resistant bacteria crisis could be made by imposing fees upon the primary users of antibiotics, much like how oil companies must pay royalties and logging companies must pay stumpage fees.

While antibiotics undoubtedly play a role in advancing public health, Hollis said that their use in industry is less about health and safety and more about profit.

It's about increasing the efficiency of food so you can reduce the amount of grain you feed the cattle. It's about giving antibiotics to baby chicks because it reduces the likelihood that they're going to get sick when you cram them together in unsanitary conditions," he said.

"These methods are obviously profitable to the farmers, but that doesn't mean it's generating a huge benefit. In fact, the profitability is usually quite marginal," Hollis said. "The real value of antibiotics is saving people from dying. Everything else is trivial."

While enforcing an outright ban on industrial antibiotic use would be a political challenge, Hollis argues that imposing a fee on the industrial use of antibiotics makes sense and is feasible.

A fee, Hollis argues, would deter the low-value use of antibiotics in the food industry and encourage farmers to improve their animal management methods.

Hollis said that in the US, moves have been made to control the non-human use of antibiotics, with the Food and Drug Administration seeking voluntary limits on the use of antibiotics for animal growth promotion on farms.

Hollis hopes the Canadian government will take even greater steps.

"Is the Canadian government going to take any action to control the use of antibiotics for food production purposes? Health Canada is trying to monitor the use of antibiotics, but has virtually no control over use," he said.