https://epaper.timesgroup.com/Olive/ODN/TimesOfIndia/shared/ShowArticle.aspx?doc=TOIGO%2F2018%2F02%2F16&entity=Ar00800&sk=DEB2B2F7&mode=text
Anyone who remembers eating chicken in India just two decades ago can easily recall the difference between what was available then, and the now-ubiquitous broiler. Those birds were undoubtedly leaner, with less meat that was relatively more expensive than is generally available now. But the taste was genuine, as opposed to the watery gelatinous blobs that pass for chicken nowadays. Even worse, there is considerable evidence mounting that the subcontinent’s favourite meat source isn’t just unpalatable, it’s actually bad for you. What is more, rampant antibiotic use in poultry farms is fast wrecking our collective resistance to the most dangerous pathogens in the world. The latest alarming news came from a wide-ranging study by the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ), which found that hundreds of tonnes of super drugs, also known as ‘antibiotics of last resort’, are being shipped to India each year for use in chicken farms. Primary amongst these is colistin, which is usually preserved as a last line of defence against extremely severe diseases. Canada-based veterinarian of Goan origin clarifies this specific drug “is not a commonly used human antibiotic except in cases of multi-drug resistance where it’s renal toxicity is an acceptable risk”. But there is still immense risk incurred by this kind of exposure. All kinds of bacteria develop resistance to these vital medicines, thus creating a growing vulnerability in overall health security. The World Health Organization has long called for strict controls on antibiotics that are “critically important to human medicine”, as well as a total ban on using them as growth promoters. This is already a widespread policy across many countries. The European Union outright abolished the use of drugs like colistin in animal farming in 2006. In the USA, they are only used under the direct supervision of licensed veterinarians. But, in India, neither the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization or the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India have exercised their powers to regulate the rampant abuse of antibiotics as growth enhancers in commercial agriculture. The BIJ reports that at least five companies openly advertise colistin-based chicken feed, which is easily available over the counter across the country. This bleak scenario is part of an overall national irresponsibility towards antibiotics. Earlier this week, the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology warned that huge amounts of unapproved medications giving rise to a highly destructive vortex in India, which combines the highest rates globally of both antimicrobial resistance and antibiotics consumption. The report is horrifying, “researchers analysed fixed dose combination (FDC) antibiotics (formulations composed of two or more drugs in a single pill) and single drug formulation (SDF) antibiotics (composed of a single drug). There were 118 different formulations of FDCs being sold in India between 2007 and 2012, compared with 5 in the United Kingdom and the United States…64 percent were not approved by the national drugs regulator, the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation, even though the sale of unapproved new drugsis illegal in India.” Just like with the disgraceful state of chicken farming in India, the perpetrators of overall Indian antibiotic use are some of the biggest corporations in the sector. “The 118 FDC formulations gave rise to 3,307 brand-named products made by 476 pharmaceutical manufacturers, including a dozen multinational companies. Multinational companies manufactured 53 of the 118 FDC formulations. Twenty of these were unapproved in India. Only four were approved in the United Kingdom and the United States.” All this is what the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment calls abusive “double standards” where leading multinational corporations carefully guard their public reputation, and “have come out in the open and shown commitment to stop antibiotic misuse in the US and other countries, but have not taken any concrete steps in India”. The numbers involved in the poultry business in India are very far from chicken feed. Even though some parts of the country have remained indifferent to broilers (such as Assam and the rest of the North-Eastern states), the other states have developed a powerful hunger for them. Annual growth tops 15%, with at least a billion birds consumed each year. India is the fifth-largest producer in the world, and has started a lucrative export trade. But what doesn’t show up on the bottom line is the grave threat to national and global health security. After seeing the BIJ report, professor Dame Sally Davies, England’s chief medical officer, said “If we have not banned growth promotion within five years we will have failed the global community.”