The One Health concept is so important because antibiotic resistance affects us all - not just our farm animals, but ourselves and our families.

The availability of effective antibiotics is crucial in human medicine, both for treatment of sepsis and life threatening bacterial infections, as well as facilitating procedures such as hip replacements, and in particular chemotherapy, which could not take place without effective antibiotic cover.

If antibiotics are not used responsibly, and in the right way, then a case of mastitis or pneumonia may not respond to the treatments delivered by your vet. Or far worse, your sick child or loved one may develop an infection which becomes untreatable with antibiotics.

Not all antibiotics are the same

Not all antibiotics are the same and certain classes of antibiotic are reserved in human medicine for treatment of very serious infections which have become unresponsive to other antibiotics.

These stronger antibiotics are considered drugs of last resort and are used when nothing else will work. Some of these antibiotics, which are known as highest priority critically important antimicrobials (HP-CIAs), are also used in veterinary medicine.

These groups of antibiotics are critical tools to treat disease in humans where the first-line antibiotics have not worked.

Given the importance of HP-CIAs in human health, strict controls should be applied to their use in veterinary medicine. We still use a small amount of these on farms, but our aim must be to limit their use, with the eventual aim to completely remove them.

The most important families of antibiotics for human health that are also used in animals are the fluoroquinolones, third and fourth generation cephalosporins, macrolides and colistin.

Policy document

In Ireland, DAFM has published a policy document which outlines the conditions under which these last-resort antibiotics should be used in veterinary medicine.

We need to ensure that these antimicrobials remain effective for people and animals into the future. Your vet should only prescribe these antimicrobials when no other treatment will work, as proven by the results of culture and sensitivity testing samples taken from sick animals.

Farmers and vets must plan for a time when they no longer use the category 1 and 2 high-priority antibiotics

New European legislation, which comes into effect in 2022, will aim to limit the use of all antibiotics on-farm, in particular HP-CIAs. The use of antibiotics for prophylaxis, ie to prevent diseases, such as blanket dry cow therapy in dairy cows at drying off, is also going to come under increasing scrutiny.

Farmers and vets must plan for a time when they no longer use the category 1 and 2 high-priority antibiotics and instead replace these antibiotics of last resort with other non-critically important alternatives.

Your vet is the person qualified to advise you on the most appropriate antibiotic, if any, to use for a particular sick animal.

Choice of antibiotic will be affected by factors such as the likely bacterial agent causing the disease and their susceptibility, the ability of the antibiotic to penetrate to the site of infection and the route of elimination of the drug.

Protection

HP-CIAs are antibiotics of last resort in human hospitals and should not be used as first-line treatments on our farms, especially when other antibiotics are more appropriate.

In order to protect animal health and welfare, these HP-CIAs can be used if there is no other effective option.

The above table will help to identify some of these HP-CIA products. Farmers need to start looking at what products they are using, and have conversations about reducing overall use.

In relation to the HP-CIAs, their use as a first-line treatment and for treatment of more than one animal must stop in order to protect all our health.

We must do the right thing and use these precious antibiotics responsibly, as they are critical to human health.