From milk prices to mastitis and feed intakes to fresh cows, dairy producers have a lot on their minds at any given time. The changing societal view of antibiotics is just one little piece of all there is to focus on.
“At what point do you choose to step forward and take those forward steps of progress?” asked Dr. Grady Bishop, senior director of market access, Elanco Animal Health.
“The time is now,” he said in response to his own question.
Bishop addressed the crowd at the Vita Plus Dairy Summit, Dec. 9-10, in Baraboo, Wisconsin, from a unique perspective. For a long time his work was focused on the farm-based, production side of the food chain. Recently, he began working on the consumer side.
He understands how agriculture continues to face an increasing demand for meat, milk and eggs, which can only come from a finite amount of resources. The vision for a food secure world includes innovation, choice, trade, stability, access, affordability, health and resources.
However, he is hearing a different point of view from consumers. “It scares me on a weekly basis the conversations we are having with food marketers and dieticians. They are misinformed,” Bishop said.
Time and again, the majority of consumers make food decisions based on three factors – taste, cost and nutrition. Yet, there is a small segment of the population where money is not an option. “This 1 percent has always been there, but it is changing and becoming more effective at what they do,” he said.
In general, when consumers are asked what is high on the priority list, antibiotics do not fall very high. However, when asked about them specifically, it is evident that interest in antibiotics in food is becoming elevated.
The second piece driving change within food companies is the generational shift from baby boomers to millennials. This new generation of consumers wants to contribute to causes they find socially responsible, Bishop said. They are also demanding transparency and shared values. Information needs to be easily digestible and readily available.
“Social media is changing so many things – how we communicate, network and market to consumers. Soon, we will have barcodes on packages where we can pull up anything [food marketers] want to share with us,” Bishop said.
Most marketers could care less about antibiotics, he added. They are just looking for a way to differentiate their products for this new consumer.
“This is something we’ll have to deal with for a period of time,” Bishop said. “Will this change? Yes. In the ’80s, it was fat was bad; now it is part of a healthy diet.”
Meanwhile, there are two major factors driving decisions on access to antibiotics – the fact that they are critical for public health and that they are vital for livestock and poultry production.
“This conversation around antibiotic resistance is a very big conversation,” Bishop said. “What happens when antibiotics stop working? This issue of antibiotic resistance and how to maintain their effectiveness is important.”
There are 10 billion animals in the U.S. and 300 million people, yet “pound for pound humans and their pets use 10 times the amount of antibiotics than what is used in food animal production,” he said.
It is also worth noting the most commonly used antibiotics in agriculture are hardly used in human health and vice versa.
However, to continue to preserve antibiotics for the medical toolbox, the FDA issued changes to antibiotic use in animals with the release of three documents in 2013.
• Guidance for Industry #209 establishes the FDA’s judicious use principle. It is focused on medically important antibiotics and limits the use of those antimicrobial drugs specifically for prevention, control and treatment in animal health. It phases out medically important antibiotics in performance uses, such as growth, nutrition or health maintenance.
“Not everything is affected,” Bishop said. Ionophores are not affected, but tetracyclines and macrolides are labeled medically important and cannot be used to enhance performance (see Figure 1).
The second major piece is the role of a veterinarian to supervise the use of certain feed additives. “Food producers aren’t losing all feed-grade antibiotics,” Bishop said. “The way they’re used will change.”
• Guidance for Industry #213 outlines how this will occur. At the onset, it is a voluntary approach, advising companies on how to revise labeling and promotion of antibiotics. “Once those changes occur, there’s not a voluntary option. In the medicated feed business, the label is the law,” he said.
Pharmaceutical companies have until December 2016 to comply, and if things haven’t changed by then, the FDA may take a different approach.
• CFR 558 proposed changes to the Veterinary Feed Directive. “We’ve got 12 months for that to work,” Bishop said, advising that if you haven’t made plans as to how you’re going to implement things on your farm, you should start talking with a veterinarian.
“As we think about where the future of this goes … don’t let that cloud the fact that to delay or deny treatment to an animal that is sick is unethical. We see emerging diseases on almost every continent. We have to have tools in the toolbox to address these in order to produce the amount of food we need,” Bishop said.
Antibiotics will remain a key part in what we do, but many companies are investing in innovation to pursue advances and treatments (such as vaccines) that lessen reliance on antibiotics. They are seeking new therapeutic indications for treatment, control and prevention of disease, and providing services that help verify and validate responsible product use.
Moving forward, Bishop said, we need to begin to frame our story a little differently. We now have to think about what the impact on the cow is and animal welfare, whether it is ethical, sustainable, economical, science-based and garners consumer interest.
“We can design and develop the perfect alternative to antibiotics, but if the consumer doesn’t believe in it, we don’t get to use it,” Bishop said.
“It is increasingly important to understand clearly how to communicate what we do,” he continued.
At the end of the day, it is about working with a veterinarian to continue to use antibiotics responsibly so these tools remain in our toolbox. PD
PHOTO: Staff photo.
