 Photo: Janice Neitzel Original article by Meredith Dawson If the industry will communicate what it already does to prevent the use of antibiotics, antimicrobial stewardship will improve and consumer transparency will strengthen. While antibiotic stewardship is of importance to consumers and producers, it can be a problematic topic to define, making improvement in the area complicated. “This definition (antibiotic stewardship) gets us stuck in a box that is confining when we only have one metric that really doesn't put any context to that use,” explained consulting company Food Forward LLC, principal, Michelle Kromm at the 2024 Delmarva Chicken Association meeting. “We have come to think of antimicrobial use and antimicrobial stewardship as being able to replace each other. This is problematic for the industry,” she continued. Currently, antimicrobial stewardship is defined as the weight of the antimicrobials used divided by the weight of the animals or the protein produced. Many factors can make this ratio change, such as the number of birds, age, slaughter weight or a change in antimicrobial, making defining the term tricky. Additionally, having one number representing the term is problematic because it doesn't provide any context for that use or reflect how chickens are being taken care of. How to better define stewardshipAccording to Kromm, stewardship is what producers do every day to take care of birds and avoid antimicrobial use, such as diagnostics, supportive health care, vaccine programs, biosecurity, veterinary care and management practices. “It is important that we bring in these additional data points, because they will put use into context,” she said. In the poultry industry, producers spend most of their time and investment in prevention. However, it is not communicated in a way that it can be reported publicly as antimicrobial stewardship. Producers could talk about how they use diagnostics to prevent antimicrobial use while maintaining bird health, which will improve consumer transparency. For example, if a veterinarian has made the decision to use a therapeutic antimicrobial, producers can explain the process that led to that decision to bring more transparency to that conversation, she added. “I don’t think that poultry companies take enough credit for the amount of research that happens on the farm to determine, for example, what non antimicrobial therapy might be useful in your overall health program,” Kromm stated. “That is an important aspect of demonstrating how you are being good stewards. We're constantly looking for ways to improve health and welfare outside of using antimicrobials. I think that this is a space in which animal agriculture could be a leader.” animal welfaresustainable solutionsComments are closed.
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