Impose User Fee to Curb use of Antibiotics on Farms: Experts

Overusing antibiotics in farms can lead to the evolution of some deadly superbugs, which could cause severe illness in humans. The rise of these antibiotic resistant bacteria can be tamed by imposing fines on non-human use of antibiotics, researchers say.

About 80 percent of antibiotics in the U.S are used in agriculture and aquaculture to increase food production. Aidan Hollis, an economics professor at University of Calgary, says that this overuse can partially be tamed by imposing user fees, which will force farmers to seek better farm management techniques.

 He says that a system of taxing people who use antibiotics in agriculture could work the same way as getting logging companies to pay stumpage fees and oil companies to cough-up royalties.

The idea of bacteria getting resistant to antibiotics used in farms isn't entirely new. Recently, health investigators found that chicken in Foster Farms poultry plants in the Central Valley had strains of bacteria that had developed resistance to common antibiotics.

In the current research paper, authors argue that the use of antibiotics to stay off infections in a farm is of "low value" and that these drugs should be used to treat bacterial infections in humans.

"It's about giving antibiotics to baby chicks because it reduces the likelihood that they're going to get sick when you cram them together in unsanitary conditions," Hollis said. "These methods are obviously profitable to the farmers, but that doesn't mean it's generating a huge benefit. In fact, the profitability is usually quite marginal.

"The real value of antibiotics is saving people from dying. Everything else is trivial," Hollis said in a news release.

Weaning famers off of antibiotics is possible by implementation of a "user fee". Researchers say that higher costs of antibiotics for livestock would force farmers to adopt better animal management techniques and opt for other methods such as "vaccination" instead of antibiotics.

Hollis also suggests that many countries could work together to reduce antibiotics use on farms. "Resistant bacteria do not respect national borders," he says.

 A report back in 2010 had said that British farms are witnessing rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

The study is published in the journal New England Journal of Medicine.