SUSTAINABILITY 68 FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE December 2024 they had already made strong progress when the campaign launched, they significantly reduced their antibiotic use. At this moment, they have reached the bottom when it comes to antibiotic reduction, without affecting animal welfare. So, if you’re almost at zero that’s fine for us, as we know you cannot reach zero. But, in other countries we continue reducing use. In several countries in the Middle East, we’re also seeing better performance and economics by reducing antibiotics. By implementing an integrated feed-farm-health approach, producers notice a clear improvement in technical performance. Usually, the investment in the program is fully compensated by improvement in the feed conversion ratio alone. However, producers have also seen a clear, positive economic benefit by curbing antibiotic use. Even though antibiotics are cheap in many parts of the Middle East, if a producer uses a lot of them, reducing antibiotics helps improve economics. On top of that, this often allows them to deliver their products at market segments with higher margins including, for export, premium retailers, etc. What is driving this race to the bottom in antibiotic use – regulations or consumers? A World Health Organization report noted that in one-third of the countries that don’t use AGPs anymore there is no legislation banning their use. Also, we see in the Middle East that AGP use has declined in countries where there is no legislation banning AGP use. Producers in this region had problems with performance and Salmonella, for the producers who want to export. When you treat with antibiotics, you are also increasing the resistance challenge, including the resistance of Salmonella – one of the bacteria with high resistance to antibiotics. If you kill all the others and Salmonella is resistant, then the problem becomes bigger. How would you respond to producers who point to regions like the U.S. where the use of specific antibiotics seems to be increasing? I often hear the question, ‘So the U.S. is reintroducing all antibiotics?’ but I say, ‘No, it’s mainly about ionophore coccidiostats in broilers, considered in the U.S. to be antibiotics in contrast to other countries in the world, including the EU.’
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