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1. Veterinary dean: Task force wants antibiotic resistance solutions at top of agenda [edited]
Farmers' Advance
November 18, 2015
WEST LAFAYETTE, IN -- A national task force report on the growing problem of antibiotic resistance in animal agriculture spotlights the need to make finding solutions a top public health priority, said Willie Reed, dean of the Purdue University College of Veterinary Medicine.
Reed serves on the 14-member Task Force on Antibiotic Resistance in Production Agriculture composed of agricultural educators, industry leaders and animal health specialists.
In its report released Oct. 29, the task force recommended that a centralized research organization be created to coordinate public and private efforts to curb antibiotic resistance, which the group says "threatens human, animal and environmental health."
"Our goal is to elevate antibiotic resistance to the top of the national agenda as a public health threat, while leveraging the collective strengths of the nation's educational, professional and policymaking sectors to enhance our knowledge of this biologically complex and poorly understood phenomenon," Reed said.
Reed called antibiotic resistance a worldwide problem.
"Our message is that land-grant universities have the capacity to contribute immensely to solving this problem," he said.
To view the full report and other resources, go to http://www.aavmc.org/PressRelease/?id=329
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2. AHI clarifies antibiotic use after Pediatric report
Feedstuffs
November 18, 2015
In a new technical report, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) says unnecessary use of antibiotics in food-producing animals is endangering medicine's ability to treat life-threatening infections in young patients.
The report, "Nontherapeutic Use of Antimicrobial Agents in Animal Agriculture: Implications for Pediatrics," calls antimicrobial drug resistance a growing public health crisis and points to a common farming practice as a contributing cause.
According to AAP, adding antibiotics to the feed of healthy livestock to promote growth, increase feed efficiency or prevent disease among herds often leaves the drugs ineffective when they are needed to treat infections in people.
The AAP report stresses the importance of preserving antibiotics to treat illness in humans and animals.
The report will appear in the December 2015 issue of Pediatrics (published online Nov. 16).
In response, the Animal Health Institute (AHI) explained that the AAP technical report "fails to recognize significant changes being made in the way antibiotics are used in food animals. It's important for the public and the human health community to know the Food & Drug Administration has proposed and won universal cooperation on a policy to eliminate the growth promotion uses of medically important antibiotics and to extend veterinary oversight to all remaining uses. This policy is due to be fully implemented by December 2016. As a result, medically important antibiotics used in food animals will be used only to fight disease under the supervision of a veterinarian.
"Once completed, antibiotics important for human health will be used in farm animals only for the therapeutic uses of disease treatment, control and prevention. These uses are classified by FDA as therapeutic because they are targeted at specific diseases or bacterium. There are differences between label claims for prevention and growth promotion. Growth promotion uses will be illegal once labels are changed according to FDA policy. Using antibiotics to promote growth will not be an option because products will not be available and veterinarians will only be able to write veterinary feed directives (prescriptions) according to the labeled indications for treatment, control and prevention," AHI said.
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3. Alternatives to Antibiotics to Keep Food Animals Healthy
Posted by Dr. Steven Kappes, USDA One Health Joint Working Group Co-Chair and Deputy Administrator, Animal Production and Protection, USDA Agricultural Research Service
USDA Blog
November 18, 2015
Antibiotics are lifesavers. We depend on them to treat bacterial infections and diseases such as pneumonia, bronchitis and strep throat, as well as ear infections and infected wounds. In response to U.S. Food and Drug Administration guidance, veterinarians and producers are moving toward more judicious antibiotic use in food animals, while keeping them healthy and ensuring that our food supply remains safe.
This is especially important because certain bacterial strains have become resistant to some of the current antibiotics used to treat infections in humans and animals, escalating the need worldwide to find and develop alternatives to antibiotics.
The USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) is developing new technologies to address antibiotic resistance and reduce the use of antibiotics through agricultural management, which includes food, animals, crops and the environment-water, soil and climate. This research falls into USDA's One Health approach when mitigating the problems associated with antibiotic resistance. One Health is the concept that the health of animals, the health of people, and the viability of ecosystems are intricately linked.
A One Health approach embraces the idea that a disease problem impacting the health of humans, animals, and the environment can only be solved through improved communication, cooperation, and collaboration across disciplines and institutions. With its partners, USDA's objective through this multidisciplinary approach is to preserve, maintain or reduce health risks to animals, humans, the environment and society. USDA has gained in-depth knowledge about antimicrobial resistance through its work on the agricultural environment, animal health and food safety.
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4. Learning from PEDv: Managing disease in manure and mortalities
By Heidi Carroll, South Dakota State University Extension
PorkNetwork.com
November 18, 2015
The economic impact of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus (PEDv) on the U.S. swine industry is estimated at around $900 billion annually since it first began infecting herds in the spring of 2013. Research on persistence of the PEDv in manure and mortality compost piles conducted by Dr. Amy Schmidt and her colleagues in the USDA-ARS and the UNL School of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences was presented during the November 4th Animal Care Wednesday Webinar by Nicole Schuster, a graduate research assistant inDr. Schmidt's lab at UNL. Schmidt's research focuses on determining appropriate management strategies for composting PEDv-positive mortalities and inactivating the virus in stored manure from PEDv-positive pigs before applying it to the soil.
Why is this research important? Well, veterinarians have speculated that a thimble full of active PEDv from the manure or gastrointestinal tract of infected pigs could effectively infect all of the state of Iowa's nearly 20 million pigs, roughly 1/3 of the U.S. pig population, so we need to be very aware of all of the potential vectors for the spread of this disease.
Let's look at what the research found and what we can apply to the other livestock species to maintain animal well-being and health.
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5. Wildlife Management Areas Close, Brucellosis Sampling Continues [WY]
By Leslie Stratmoen
SheridanMedia.com
November 17, 2015
The Kearns and Amsden Creek wildlife habitat management areas in the Big Horn Mountains are now closed.
Bud Stewart of the Game and Fish Department office in Sheridan said it's a seasonal closure, which comes around this time, each year, as a means of protecting elk and deer.
And, he said, the brucellosis testing program of elk is continuing.
So far, he said, the Game and Fish Department has collected about 350 usable samples, of which about 100 are from elk in hunt areas on the east side of the Big Horns. Brucellosis sampling collection will continue, he said, until the end of the year.
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6. $2.5 million grant funds study of how infectious diseases become epidemics
Kansas State University
EurekAlert
November 18, 2015
Manhattan, Kansas -- Two Kansas State University researchers are exploring how diseases spread across long distances in an effort to learn how to better control the next human, animal or plant epidemic.
Caterina Scoglio, professor of electrical and computer engineering and Faryad Darabi Sahneh, research assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, are part of a larger group including colleagues from Oregon State University, North Carolina State University, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and two universities in England. The group was awarded a $2.5 million grant through the Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases, or EEID, program jointly funded by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture, the National Institutes of Health and the U.K.'s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. The program supports projects that study how large-scale environmental events such as habitat destruction or pollution alter risks of viral, parasitic and bacterial disease emergence.
The Kansas State University team will study data for vector-borne infectious diseases to model how these types of epidemics spread. Vector-borne diseases are spread by infectious microbes transmitted by ticks, mosquitos or other insects or parasites. Kansas State University researchers are particularly interested in the role of long-distance dispersal in the spread of diseases. They will evaluate the efficacy of different control methods, such as limiting animal movements or reducing the vector population. As models are compared and refined, they will help researchers develop rules of thumb for controlling outbreaks.
Scoglio, professor of electrical and computer engineering, said the project combines scientists with expertise in plant pathology, livestock diseases and vector-borne diseases to identify similarities in how the different types of diseases spread.
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7. The Battle Against the Bugs [equine]
By Christy Corp-Minamiji, DVM
TheHorse.com
November 17, 2015
There's an "anti" for almost everything. Here's a rundown on our arsenal of equine disease-fighting drugs and their proper uses.
Humans have been waging war against the soldiers of disease for hundreds of years, long before fabled scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek first discovered these tiny organisms under a microscope. In fact, in March 2015 a team of biologists and medieval scholars at the University of Nottingham uncovered a 10th century recipe for antibacterial eye ointment. After recreating the salve, they confirmed their predecessors in the laboratory were on to something-the concoction was effective against today's methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), bacterial species that earned their name because of broad resistance to most modern drugs.
Indeed, the battle with pathogens, or agents of disease, continues today, but current mainstays of the human-led arsenal in the disease wars are an array of "anti" drugs, which include antimicrobials (more commonly called antibiotics), antivirals, antiparasitics, and antifungals. These are designed to fight enemies that use guerrilla-type tactics against the horse's immune system-targeting its weaknesses and adapting quickly to changes in the environment.
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