Understanding and managing antimicrobial resistance is important for livestock production and to ensure the continued effectiveness of veterinary products. It’s also a complex issue under intense public scrutiny two factors that, under the wrong conditions, don’t go well together.
The Ontario Medical Association recently began pushing for governments to step up its involvement in the fight against antibiotic resistance by claiming that agricultural use of the products in question is a key cause of increased antibiotic resistant bacterial infections in humans. The OMA is asking both the Ontario and federal government to regulate the use of antibiotics in livestock and ban altogether the use of antibiotics as growth regulators in livestock in Ontario.
The beef industry has been actively involved in the past and with on-going research into this important topic. In this episode of the Beef Research School, Dr. Reynold Bergen, with the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association, outlines how resistance forms, what we know about the beef industry’s excellent track record on the topic and how up-coming research is working to answer more questions.
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