Victoria Albers' Article Review

McEwen, S. (2006). Antibiotic Use in Animal Agriculture: What Have We Learned and Where are We Going? Animal Biotechnology, 17(2), 239-250. doi:10.1080/10495390600957233.

In Scott McEwen’s article, “Antibiotic Use in Animal Agriculture: What Have We Learned and Where are We Going?” he describes that antibiotics are important to our society because our population is increasing, and this is going to have a direct effect on the demand for food products. Safe and effective antibiotics are not only essential for the direct use for human health but also for humane and efficient agricultural production. He goes into detail on how critical it is to use them as prudently as possible. We need to treat them as if they were of limited supply, considering antibiotic resistance threatens the effectiveness of them and that they are critical for the welfare of public and animal health. He makes the point that we need to view antibiotics as one of many tools to manage overall health and production in agriculture. He believes that it is critical that we create strict governmental groups and programs to enforce policies and regulations. We also need to continue to collect and use data to improve our knowledge on the science of antibiotic resistance and strive to find ways to maximize production while minimally affecting resistance.

This article provides information on the research that has been done on antibiotics that we have accumulated over the years. He shows how this will help us develop different techniques and practices that we can continue to advance which is essential for risk management of antibiotic resistance. This article does a good job of explaining what is known about antibiotic resistance and how/why more research and programs should be implemented. This undoubtedly will provide essential information for creating the website.

Foremost, this article is clearly part of ongoing research on antibiotic use in animals and antibiotic resistance. McEwen uses around 30 sources from previous works and discusses the different techniques that have been deemed effective in the past. He explains that the studies done on resistance on various species of bacteria have been quantitative as well as qualitative, and the results varied depending on the species that was being looked at which could be further studied. Also, he discusses that most of the studies are based on human use of antibiotics. He makes a point that the risk of antibiotic resistance is just as important to animals, but little work has been done to research this. This article is just shows a small portion of what is being done on antibiotic resistance and gives a good background of what has provided us with the information needed to better understand resistance and how to control it.

Secondly, he goes in depth on what needs to be done to help control antibiotic resistance. He has intelligent ideas on the research that needs to be done. For example, he talks about how we don’t fully understand human and animal health risks from antibiotic use in animals, all we know is that there is some risk and some effect on consumer confidence. He says we need get specifics and have more technical and detailed studies. We can use already found information for communication, to determine strengths and weaknesses of study techniques, and to point us in the right direction on what needs additional research and surveillance (McEwen 2006). He explains how food especially from animals is important sources of infection, but we are less certain on the frequency and magnitude of this. We need to better understand this before we can make a decision on what actions need to be done. One of his biggest points was that there are always costs that come along with benefits, and we need to find the right balance based on what we know when considering antibiotic use in animals. His idea was to promote a science based antibiotic regulatory policy and more governmental programs to enforce strict, specific regulations. With this being done, the population who deals with antibiotics and animals will understand the importance of proper use of antibiotics and use them more prudently.

Last of all, this article is going to be a useful source in our website. I will be using this source in my part of the project as different research and program ideas that could be implemented in the future. This inspired me to do further research on what is known on the economic costs and benefits of antibiotic use in animals and to look at what types of research has been done on antibiotic resistance in animals since 2006 when this article was written.