The Investigation of the Monitoring Methods Used to Analyze the Sales amount of Antimicrobial Agents in Food-producing Animals

摘要

Antimicrobial usage in food-producing animals is a global issue due to the worldwide emergence of antimicrobial resistance. The use of antimicrobial agents in beef cattle, dairy cow, broilers and pigs from 2005 to 2013 in Japan were investigated. Published data on the sales amount of antimicrobial active ingredients and on biomass of the target animal species were available from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Japan. Antimicrobial agents were classified based on the ATCvet classification recommended by the World Health Organization. The antimicrobial usage was expressed in terms of milligram of active ingredient sold per kg biomass. In order to normalize the sales data for the animal population that can subjected to treatment with antimicrobial agents, two biomass estimation methods were used. The first method is reported by Hosoi et al.1) while the second one is the population correction unit (PCU) proposed by the European surveillance of veterinary antimicrobial consumption (ESVAC) project team. The PCU was introduced as a proxy for the size of the animal population in European Union (EU).