Conference Report: Antimicrobial stewardship in Canadian agriculture and veterinary medicine. How is Canada doing and what still needs to be done?

摘要

The 225 delegates attending the conference came from every province of Canada and from a variety of backgrounds, including agriculture, veterinary medicine, medicine, public health, the pharmaceutical and animal health industry, regulatory agencies, provincial Ministries of Agriculture, and journalism. Held October 30th to November 2nd, 2011 in Toronto, the conference was a follow-up to conferences held in 1999 and 2005 (1,2), but expanded its scope from a focus on the human health effects of the use of antimicrobials in food animals to a more nuanced understanding of antimicrobial resistance in all animals in which they are used. The conference was designed largely to promote the concept of antimicrobial stewardship, to discuss the many facets of stewardship, and to identify the factors that stand in the way of good stewardship of antimicrobials in animals in Canada. It was organized to address good stewardship by different themes (Figure 1).