Health: Organizations: No reserve antibiotics for animals

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Organizations: No reserve antibiotics for animals

Celebrities, politicians and organizations are calling for antibiotics that are particularly important for humans to be banned from industrial animal husbandry. Photo: Christin Klose / dpa-tmn

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If even reserve antibiotics no longer help, people will lose their lives. It is estimated that 33,000 people die annually in the EU as a result.

Celebrities, politicians and organizations are calling for antibiotics that are particularly important for humans to be banned from industrial animal husbandry.

This emerges from a message on the occasion of the European Antibiotic Day on Thursday, which is supported, among others, by the doctor Eckart von Hirschhausen, the Green politician and television chef Sarah Wiener as well as the organizations Greenpeace, Germanwatch, the German environmental aid and the Federal Association of Consumers.

The aim is to prevent the development of resistant pathogens. So-called reserve antibiotics are usually used for infectious diseases when normal antibiotics no longer work. These should be used as rarely as possible in order not to endanger their effectiveness through developing resistances. The more an antibiotic is used, the more likely resistant pathogen subtypes will prevail. According to the EU Commission, 33,000 people die every year in the EU because antibiotics no longer work for them.

“Above all, the problem of antibiotic resistance must be resolved politically,” emphasizes SPD politician Tiemo Wölken, who also supports the appeal. Most recently, the Greens in the European Parliament failed to enforce stricter rules for the antibiotic treatment of animals. The proposals had sparked protests at the Association of Practicing Veterinarians, which launched a signature campaign against the plans.

dpa

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