How can you help reduce the unnecessary use of antibiotics in livestock production?
Here are two easy ways in which you can act...
A) Pressure your MP to support the establishment of a Canadian Centre for Antimicrobial Resistance
While broad-based public interest groups are calling upon the Canadian government to end the widespread use of antibiotics as growth promoters in livestock production, Ottawa has chosen to disband the ten-year-old Canadian Committee on Antimicrobial Resistance (CCAR) and ignore pleas from health experts and scientists to establish a Canadian Centre for Antimicrobial Resistance.
The CCAR was scrapped in June 2009 when the federal government opted to discontinue the committee’s $300,000 annual budget. Shortly before that decision, the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) commissioned a review of the committee’s activities which resulted in a report from the Pan Canadian Stakeholder Consultations on Antimicrobial Resistance which recommended PHAC take measures to fill the void left by the CCAR.
Six months have passed and there is no indication from Ottawa or PHAC that they intend to address the issue of antibiotic misuse and growing resistance to antibiotics- a problem the World Health Organization describes as “a crisis which threatens to rob the world of opportunities to treat or cure many infectious diseases”.
You can obtain your MP’s name and contact information by entering your postal code here.
B) Write to the Food Directorate (Bureau of Veterinary Drugs), the Pest Management Regulatory Agency of Health Canada and the Animal Products Directorate of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) to demand tougher regulations governing the use of antibiotics.
Each of these agencies plays a role in the federal regulation of agricultural antibiotics and all of them need to hear the public is alarmed by the overuse of antibiotics on factory farms. Please take a moment and write to one or all of them with your concerns.
Food Directorate (attn. Bureau of Veterinary Drugs)
Pest Management Regulatory Agency of Health Canada
Canadian Food Inspection Agency (attn. Animal Products Directorate)