WHO asks farmers to give animals less antibiotics; pork lobby says proposed ban would be amoral

A piglet on an Illinois farm gets a shot of antibiotics.
(Chicago Tribune photo by Stacey Wescott)

"The World Health Organization, worried about an increasing epidemic of drug-resistant infections, has thrown its considerable weight behind the campaign to cut the use of antibiotics in pigs, chickens and cattle that are raised for their meat," Dan Charles reports for NPR. "The WHO is calling on governments to follow the example of Denmark and the Netherlands, which have banned the use of these drugs to make animals grow faster, or simply to protect healthy animals from getting sick."

Antimicrobials are sometimes overused or misused in treating human sickness, but the amount of antibiotics used on farms is usually far greater. In its new guidelines, the WHO asks farmers not to use antibiotics to promote faster growth or prevent disease in healthy animals. Veterinarians are asked to avoid using antibiotics that are most critical in human health. And it asks governments to not allow any new antibiotics discovered in the future to be used on animals.

The National Pork Producers Council "condemned the WHO's proposals to ban the use of drugs for disease prevention, and to stop using drugs that are most critical for human health. According to the NPPC, such a ban 'is antithetical to pork farmers' and veterinarians' moral obligation to care for their pigs'," Charles reports.