Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Beyond such production practices, other factors are amplifying avian influenza's
deadly potential. these include unsustainable consumption patterns and dietary
demands, which make it necessary to address the problems of agricultural antibiotics,
antimicrobial resistance, vaccine scarcity, intellectual property, and international
trade regulations.
Consumption Patterns, Agricultural Antibiotics, and Antimicrobial Resistance
Most animal and plant antibiotics that are added daily to livestock feed, aquaculture
waters, and seed stocks are used to promote growth, and the industry is indisposed
to give them up: bigger animals, fish, and fruit bring bigger profits. Yet many
compounds, being chemically identical to medicinal antibiotics, cause microbial
resistance to human antibiotics (Garrett 2005a). By limiting the efficacy of life-
saving health technologies and making the public more vulnerable to microbial
mortality, the routine use of growth promoters for non-medicinal purposes poses a
direct threat to global health (Garrett 2005a; Fidler 2004a).
Since antimicrobial resistance is as much about economics as it is about health,
government regulation (and even proscriptions in some cases) of antimicrobial drugs
in domestic agriculture may be necessary to end their misuse. this is a policy on which
the eU has already taken the lead. In the interest of public health, other countries
should consider following the european example (even ahead of an international
agreement) and issuing similar guidelines on high-risk meat imports.
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In Defence of the Precautionary Principle: Public Health and International Trade
Although justified from the public health perspective, such actions remain open
to a legal challenge under international trade rules (Fidler 2004b). trade policy
profoundly affects health; yet there have been few incentives to adopt health-minded
policies in trade negotiations. trade rounds have more often tended to limit access
to life-saving drugs via agreements on intellectual property rights (Fidler 2004b)
or to abolish the right of governments to resort to the precautionary principle in the
interest of public health. there is some scope for progress, however, as the global
response to the AIDS epidemic illustrates. A confluence of civil society pressure on
western governments and producers in recent years helped bring down the price of
the aIDS cocktail from US$15 000 to US$150 per person per year (Keusch
et al.
2006). It also paved the way for the wto's Declaration on the trIPS agreement
and Public Health in 2001, which gave this growing consensus a basis in law (Soni
2004; Fidler 2004b).
the transatlantic trade war that erupted in 1999 over the eU ban on hormone-
treated beef offers a cautionary tale. the europeans blocked beef imports for
public safety reasons, citing the precautionary principle, which requires authorities
to proceed cautiously to avoid irreversible damage in situations where there is
insufficient scientific evidence but the possible damage could be significant. The
american and canadian governments denounced this action as a non-tariff trade
barrier, took the eU to the wto's dispute panel, and won—three times. Preventing
a similar dispute from erupting in the future would require ottawa and washington
