December 24, 2019

  

Sales of veterinary antimicrobials on the decline in US and Europe: report

 

Sales of antimicrobial drugs for use in animals are falling on both sides of the Atlantic, in a sign that government, animal health industry and veterinary community actions to combat drug resistance are gaining traction, Veterinary Information Network reported.

 

Reports from the United Kingdom, the European Union and the United States indicate that overall use of antimicrobial drugs in food-producing animals is in decline in recent years.

 

However, the latest figures from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration released earlier this month show that domestic sales of antimicrobial drugs for food-producing animals in 2018 climbed 9% compared with 2017 to 11,575,059 kilograms of active ingredient.

 

Officials said they expected a partial rebound following a particularly sharp dip in sales in 2017 that they attributed to regulatory changes. The agency stressed that the overall direction is positive.

 

"Despite [the] increase, 2018 is the second-lowest year on record and the overall trend continues to indicate that ongoing efforts to support antimicrobial stewardship are having an impact: sales in 2018 are down 21% since 2009, the first year of reporting, and down 38% since 2015, the peak year of sales and distribution," the FDA said.

 

Efforts by the FDA and some interest groups to limit the use of antimicrobials lead to a new rule in 2017. As a result, US livestock feed manufacturers now need a Veterinary Feed Directive from a licensed veterinarian for drug addition to feed.

 

Across the Atlantic, the European Union banned the use of antimicrobial drugs for growth promotion more than a decade before the US in 2006. Some individual member states have initiated national campaigns related to antimicrobials. The United Kingdom, for example, in 2013 made it illegal for pharmaceutical companies to advertise antimicrobial drugs.

 

In October, the UK Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD) released a report that sales of veterinary antibiotics in Britain fell by 9% in 2018 (226 tonnes) compared with 2017, and by 49% compared with 2014. The UK sales data includes companion animals.

 

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) also reported in October that in 25 European countries that provided veterinary antimicrobial sales data for all years between 2011 and 2017, there was an overall sales decline of 32.5%.

 

The EMA reports sales of antimicrobial drugs not in total kilograms or metric tons, but in milligrams of active ingredient per "population correction unit," or PCU, a proxy that accounts for the size of the food animal population, including all horses. The amount sold in 2017 was 109.3 mg per PCU, compared with 162 mg per PCU in 2011. The EMA data relates only to food-producing animals.

 

The 25 countries were Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the UK.

 

19 of the countries had sales declines of more than 5%, whereas sales rose by more than 5% in three countries - Bulgaria, Poland and Slovakia.

 

Exactly how much new regulations and public outreach efforts contributed to overall decreases in the US is a "challenging work in progress," FDA spokesperson Anne Norris said, because sales volume alone does not capture the impact of stewardship efforts.

 

"The agency continues to work with federal, academic and industry partners to obtain more information about how, when and why animal producers and veterinarians use medically-important antimicrobial drugs in food-producing animals," Norris underscored.

 

The FDA, she added, is planning to publish a report in 2020 that integrates and analyses other data sources to more fully assess the progress of antimicrobial stewardship efforts.