Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #110245

H. Scott Hurd, DVM, PhD, Department of Veterinary Diagnostics and Production Animal Medicine, Iowa State University, 1710 Vet Med, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011, 515-294-7905, shurd@iastate.edu

The potential impact on human health from antibiotic-resistant bacteria selected by use of antibiotics in food animals has resulted in many reports and recommended actions. The United States Food and Drug Administration Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM) has issued Guidance document 152 that presents one potential process for conducting a qualitative risk assessment and managing drug use in food animals. Using this guideline, a quantitative deterministic model was developed to assess the risk from two macrolide antibiotics. Risk was defined as the probability of illness caused by resistant food-borne bacteria combined with the probability of treatment failure. However, risk estimates alone are not sufficient for decision making. Therefore, a mathematical model was developed to calculate changes in human foodborne disease rates due to changes in animal illness rates. With this model, we assessed the potential human health impacts of continued antibiotic use in agricultural animals. The model predicts that small increases in animal illness will increase pathogen contamination on meat resulting in large increases in human illness.

Learning Objectives:

• The participant will become
• • Familiar with the risk-based assessment used by the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Veterinary Medicine to evaluate the human health impacts of antibiotics used in food animals.
• • Aware of the outcomes of a model developed to determine the public health risk to the use of specific macrolide antibiotics in veterinary medicine
• • Informed of a method for assessing relative public health benefits of changes in animal health.

Keywords: Risk Assessment, Antibiotic Resistance

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commertial supporters WITH THE EXCEPTION OF Consulting Agreement with Elanco Animal Health, a manufacturer of macrolide antimicrobials.

Recorded presentation