Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2019 Mar 26;4(1):54.
doi: 10.3390/tropicalmed4010054.

Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) in the Food Chain: Trade, One Health and Codex

Anna George  1   2
Affiliations

Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) in the Food Chain: Trade, One Health and Codex

Anna George. Trop Med Infect Dis. .

Abstract

Strategies that take on a One Health approach to addressing antimicrobial resistance (AMR) focused on reducing human use of antimicrobials, but policy-makers now have to grapple with a different set of political, economic, and highly sensitive trade interests less amenable to government direction, to tackle AMR in the food chain. Understanding the importance and influence of the intergovernmental Codex negotiations underway on AMR in the Food Chain is very weak but essential for AMR public policy experts. National and global food producing industries are already under pressure as consumers learn about the use of antimicrobials in food production and more so when the full impact of AMR microorganisms in the food chain and on the human microbiome is better understood. Governments will be expected to respond. Trade-related negotiations on access and use made of antimicrobials is political: the relevance of AMR 'evidence' is already contested and not all food producers or users of antimicrobials in the food chain are prepared to, or capable of, moving at the same pace. In trade negotiations governments defend their interpretation of national interest. Given AMR in the global food chain threatens national interest, both AMR One Health and zoonotic disease experts should understand and participate in all trade-related AMR negotiations to protect One Health priorities. To help facilitate this an overview and analysis of Codex negotiations is provided.

Keywords: AMR; Codex; One Health; WHO; World Trade Organization (WTO); food chain; trade.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The author declares no conflict of interest.

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. United Nations Seventy-First Session of the General Assembly—Political Declaration of the High-Level Meeting on Antimicrobial Resistance, A/RES/71/3 held on 21 September 2016, Resolution Adopted 5 October 2016. [(accessed on 4 February 2019)]; Available online: http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/71/3.
    1. Review of Antimicrobial Resistance. [(accessed on 14 February 2019)]; Available online: https://amr-review.org/
    1. Burnham J.P., Olsen M.A., Kollef M.H. Re-Estimating Annual Deaths Due to Multidrug-Resistant Organism Infections. [(accessed on 15 February 2019)]; Available online: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/infection-control-and-hospital-e.... - PMC - PubMed
    1. CIDRAP New Estimates Aim to Define the True Burden of Superbug Infections. [(accessed on 14 February 2019)]; Available online: http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2019/02/new-estimates-aim-def....
    1. WTO Overview: The TRIPS Agreement. [(accessed on 10 February 2019)]; Available online: https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/intel2_e.htm.

LinkOut - more resources