We said many times that tackling antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is the highest goal of the new VMP Regulation1.
This new law is just one of the several actions taken by the European Union against this challenge. AMR could detrimentally lead to ethical, socio-economic, scientific and environmental negative effects for humanity. Thus, it deserves an ethical, socio-economic, scientific and environmental answer.
AMR is, first of all, a health issue, carrying around a serious social and economic burden. The estimation of its impact in the EU alone is 25,000 deaths per year. What would happen if no actions were taken? Millions of deaths are estimated globally, more than what cancer could do by 20502.
The social and economic burden has also been estimated. First, costs associated with healthcare would increase. Second, with a population suffering from infections caused by resistant bacteria, productivity would be hardly compromised.
An idea in figures? EUR 1.5 billion annually in healthcare costs and productivity losses as a consequence of AMR in the EU alone.
At the same time, the research, development, manufacture and marketing of new antimicrobial products has substantially slowed down in the last two decades.
Tackling AMR through effective and alternative strategies and tools will mitigate its detrimental impact on European society, contributing to economic growth and also reducing environmental pressure. In the past months, we deeply explored this issue from a dairy farming point of view3, 4, 5.
Effective biosecurity strategies represent also an extra certainty for food security.
Efficiency and management, along with innovation, is all we can do, as dairy farmers, to help in the process of reversing AMR development.
The harmonization process, started with the new VMP Regulation and that will be possible through the implementation of a One-Health approach, means an EU answer to this big challenge. In addition, the fact that AMR has an international dimension makes this approach really necessary.
This is where the action against AMR has an ethical, socio-economic, scientific and environmental scope.
OZOLEA was founded in 2016, immediately after the 2015 WHO Global Action Plan on AMR. Since the beginning, its mission has been that of standing at the forefront of this fight, side by side with dairy farmers.
As a business activity and project, OZOLEA wants to spread all the best practices for udder and uterus issue management for dairy farming. For this reason, we have been disseminating the key aspects behind the new VMP Regulation: knowledge is the first tool to face this big challenge.
What is next? Finding and providing dairy farmers with all the possible strategies to accelerate the pace towards the compliance with new rules, always aiming at profit improvement.
1 Reg. (EU) 2019/6 on veterinary medicines applicable from 28 January 2022: are we ready?
2 COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE COUNCIL AND THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT. A European One Health Action Plan against Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR)
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52017DC0339&from=IT
3 Making money by saving milk.
https://www.ozolea.it/making-money-by-saving-milk/
4 A more valuable manure for better crop productivity.
https://www.ozolea.it/a-more-valuable-manure-for-better-crop-productivity/
5 Water quality is important for dairy farmers.
https://www.ozolea.it/water-quality-is-important-for-dairy-farmers/
