The Canadian Pork Council is applauding the release of proposed legislation to amend the Food and Drug Regulations pertaining to veterinary drugs in an effort to address antimicrobial resistance.
The federal government published its Proposed Changes to the Food and Drug Regulations Related to Antimicrobial Resistance July 2, kicking off a 75 day public comment period.
Dr. Egan Brockhoff, the Veterinary Council with the Canadian Pork Council, says the key change is the removal of growth promotion claims in Canada for all antimicrobials for food producing animals which leaves the prescription claims and treatment and prevention claims.
For most pork producers, they won’t notice any change what so ever with these new rules. There won’t be a change in the number of available antibiotics for producers. A product that you used yesterday, you’ll still be able to use tomorrow. What will happen though is the growth promotion claim will leave and you’ll be left with the decision between you and your veterinarian, are we gong to use this product at a prevention label dose or a therapeutic label dose?
There’s gong to be some discussion between the producer and the veterinarian on how to best use these products. There’s going to be a lot more work downloaded onto the herd veterinarian. Herd veterinarians are going to have to routinely monitor everything now because everything will go to a prescription drug list most likely and that prescription drug list will need to be maintained by the producer.
Feed mills of course will now have to manufacture medicated feeds according to products on their prescription labels and that’s going to be a bit of a change. Where as before we had over the counter labels for feed medication, now we will have prescription labels for all feed medications. There’s going to be some more work definitely for the veterinary community, there’s going to be more work for the feed community. ~ Dr. Egan Brockhoff, Canadian Pork Council
Dr. Brockhoff says the Canadian pork industry supports antimicrobial stewardship and endorses the direction the regulations are going.
