Online course for reduced antibiotic consumption in animal husbandry

2019-02-26

Do you want to learn more about disease prevention and reduced antibiotic use in animal husbandry? Register now for an open online course developed by the Swedish Agricultural University (SLU) in collaboration with Axfoundation. This free course covers how to combine good animal health, welfare and productivity with low antibiotic consumption to limit the spread of antimicrobial resistance among bacteria, based on experiences from Sweden.

With this course, we are addressing the need for a massive global education drive into antibiotics – on humans, but above all in animal husbandry, where about three-quarters of all antibiotics are used.

Education is required for animal health personnel, authorities, commerce, students, teachers and consumer organisations. The work being done in this area in Sweden and by Axfoundation needs to be spread to more people. Axfoundation took the initiative to work with SLU to develop the online course – which is also SLU’s first ever free, open online course.

The course will go live on SLU’s Future Learn platform on February 25th, 2019. The goal is to contribute to reducing and making more effective the use of antibiotics in animal husbandry in low- and middle-income countries, but also to some extent in OECD countries.

Axfoundation has been a driving force behind the issue of reducing the use of antibiotics for food-producing animals in collaboration with the Swedish Food Retailers Federation, among others, for the last five years. Why do we do it? Infections caused by resistant bacteria, also called multidrug resistant, are responsible for some 500,000 deaths annually. In 2050, 10 million people are expected to die from antibiotic-resistant infections if no effort is made to counteract this trend. Antibiotic resistance is a worldwide health problem and affects all parts of the world, from low- and medium- to high-income countries. The consequences of antibiotic resistance are, however, most evident in poor countries.

Sweden is a pioneer in this area and has some of the lowest use of antibiotics for food-producing animals in the world. The sale of antibiotics in Sweden is 92% lower than the average among statistics-reporting countries in the EU/EEA. Sweden is skilled when it comes to fostering collaboration between farmers, veterinarians, academia and government agencies to reduce the use of and need for antibiotics through preventive animal health care and good hygiene. Register here.

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