BRUSSELS -- The European Union is moving toward a total ban on the use of antibiotics in animal feed, despite concerns that such a move could make European meat more expensive.
Members of the EU's Scientific Steering Committee last week said the use of antibiotics to prevent disease -- as opposed to curing it -- constitutes misuse and should be banned altogether. The EU had allowed the use of eight antibiotics for animals, but has since banned four of those. A total ban would amount to adding the other four products to the list, with a phaseout beginning as early as next year.
But farmers and pharmaceuticals producers said political concerns have eclipsed science in the debate, which pits pork, beef and chicken producers from several small northern European countries -- Sweden, Finland and Denmark -- against consumer groups, the EU's own Scientific Committee on Animal Nutrition and big meat producers in exporting countries.
Pfizer Inc., one of the companies that makes antibiotics for growth promoters, is suing the Danish government over that country's national ban of antibiotics as animal-feed additives. It has also taken its case against the EU's ban to the European Court of Justice and the European ombudsman. Eli Lilly & Co., another antibiotics producer, said it may have to close a factory in England if the ban is extended. And the U.S., which has banned some antibiotics for animal use, said it doesn't see a need to restrict use of the eight under discussion in the EU.
Resistance to Resistance
Farmers add antibiotics to animal feed as a preventive measure to keep animals healthy. Farmers and pharmaceutical makers said reducing the use of antibiotics would lead to increased disease and mortality rates and make meat more expensive by increasing the amount of time it takes to get animals to ideal slaughtering weight.
"If you want relatively inexpensive chicken on the table, you have to use antibiotics," said Bert van den Bergh, an Eli Lilly executive responsible for the company's European operations.
The European Commission, however, is less worried about inexpensive meat than it is about resistance to antibiotics. Scientists gathered at a conference on the subject last week in Brussels warned of a major public-health problem in the increasing numbers of harmful bacteria that are becoming resistant to the antibiotics commonly prescribed to combat them. They urged a reduction in the overall use of antibiotics world-wide.
Although they represent only about 15% of total antibiotics use, antibiotics fed to animals as a preventive measure against disease should be phased out and ultimately abolished, the scientists said.
EU officials concede that they lack clear scientific evidence to link the use of antibiotics in animal feed to growing antibiotic resistance in humans. "The really sound scientific evidence, especially in some areas, just isn't always there," said Keith Jones, chairman of the Scientific Committee on Medicinal Products and Medical Devices of the European Commission.
Shoot First
Nevertheless, EU authorities invoking a "precautionary principle" have repeatedly decided that the risks of growing antibiotic resistance in humans outweigh any immediate economic impact of a ban.
"Antibiotic resistance is like drunk driving or second-hand smoke," said Patrice Courvalin, a scientist with the Pasteur Institute in Paris, who added, "You're exposing people who have nothing to do with the problem."
Critics say the precautionary principle gives regulators a license to shoot first and ask questions later in all manner of scientific debates where evidence isn't immediately forthcoming.
The principle was the linchpin of the EU's ban on the export of British beef, despite the lack of firm evidence linking "mad-cow" disease in cattle to a degenerative human brain disease called Creutzfeld-Jakobs Disease. It is also used to justify a ban on the import of U.S. beef treated with growth hormones, which the EU says are dangerous for human consumption, despite their widespread use in the U.S., Canada and other countries. On Monday, the World Trade Organization authorized the U.S. to impose trade sanctions of $124.3 million (116.7 million euros) on EU products as compensation for losses stemming from the ban.
Veiled Protectionism?
Some observers say the topic wouldn't get such attention if the foreign- and domestic-policy fronts weren't so quiet now. "Environment and health provide a unifying agenda in a period where there are no other big ideas," said Bill Durodie, an economist with the London School of Economics.
Others see it as a new form of veiled protectionism. Swedish farmers, who have been subject to a national ban on the use of antibiotics as growth promoters since 1986, have been lobbying the EU to adapt the Swedish ban in all 15 EU nations. They argue that the local ban hasn't led to a significant increase in the cost of meat.
But a 1997 study by a professor at the University of Gent found that the Swedish model was a poor model for the rest of Europe. "On balance, the EU system, with its careful regulatory controls, more efficient production norms and its animal-welfare codes, seems better placed to operate within the global challenges of the 21st century, compared with the Swedish experiment, which in the past has depended largely on government intervention and subsidies," it concluded.
Sweden accounts for less than 2% of EU production of pork, poultry and beef.
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