Report / Joint Committee on the use of Antibiotics in Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Medicine.

  • Great Britain. Joint Committee on the use of Antibiotics in Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Medicine.
Date:
1969
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report / Joint Committee on the use of Antibiotics in Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Medicine. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    52/94 (page 44)
    would be of economic value in livestock production under U.K. farming conditions.’’ We agree that with slight modification these criteria effectively define a class of ‘‘feed’’ antibiotics which could be usefully employed in animal husbandry without detriment to the therapeutic armoury and that antibiotics in this class could conveniently and safely be supplied without professional prescription. 9.10. In 1962 no antibiotic commercially available in the United Kingdom satisfied these three conditions and so the Joint Committee was unable to recommend that the principles they had put forward should be applied at once to all antibiotics used for animal feeding, since to do so would then have deprived farmers of the economic advantages of feeding antibiotics. Since then, however, the commercial development of antibiotics has been influenced by the recommendations of the Joint Committee so that there is now on the market at least one drug, zinc bacitracin, which comes near to satisfying the desired criteria and other antibiotics are under assessment. Moreover the recognition that non-antibiotic substances (such as some compounds of copper or arsenic) may be used to promote growth has reduced the economic dependence on antibiotics. Consequently we have decided after careful consideration that principles of the type set out in 1962 by the Scien- tific Sub-Committee for the selection of additional ‘‘feed’’ antibiotics may now be extended and applied to all antibiotics used for this purpose. We are convinced that it is necessary to do this and are satisfied that it may now be done without substantial economic detriment to the farming industry. We are encouraged in this view by the great majority of the evidence we have received. 9.11. Accordingly, we recommend that permission to supply and use an anti- biotic without prescription for adding to animal feed should be restricted to the antibiotics which: (i) are of economic value in livestock production under United Kingdom farming conditions, (ii) have little or no application as therapeutic agents in man or animals (paragraph 9.12) and (iii) will not impair the efficacy of a prescribed therapeutic antibiotic or antibiotics through the development of resistant strains of organisms (paragraph 9.13). 9.12. In recommending above that a ‘‘feed’’ antibiotic shall have little or no application as a therapeutic agent we include an antibiotic that is withheld from use in treatment although it has some potential uses in the therapeutic field. It was argued in evidence that it must necessarily be against the public interest ever to withhold such an antibiotic from therapeutic use; doubtless this will usually be so, but we think it is possible that on occasion the balance of interest between use as a “‘feed’’ antibiotic and use in therapy might favour the former. For example, this position could arise if an antibiotic which on all other grounds was clearly suitable for use as a ‘‘feed’’ antibiotic were also used therapeutically in situations where some other medicine could equally well be used. As we think it is highly desirable that a permitted ‘‘feed’’ anti- biotic should be withheld from therapeutic use we believe that in such cases recognition as a ‘‘feed’’ antibiotic should be conditional on the withdrawal of the antibiotic from use in therapy.