[env-trinity] Salmon farmers warned on antibiotic use

[Josh Allen]

Salmon farmers warned on antibiotic use


http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/salmon-farmers-warned-on-antibiotic-
use/2007/06/22/1182019367389.html

 

Andrew Darby in Hobart
June 23, 2007

THE use of antibiotics on Australia's favourite farmed fish, Atlantic
salmon, has risen disturbingly as diseases flare in their sea pens.

The increase has raised strong private concerns from the Tasmanian
Government, which said it was nearly double the amount expected.

It was a threat to human health, the environment, and salmon's clean
market image, the Primary Industries Minister, David Llewellyn, warned
in documents obtained by the Herald.

The antibiotics are appearing in wild fish near farms, and the
Government has called for an end to the use of one drug, amoxicillin,
also used on humans. The $250 million-a-year industry, which produces
22,000 tonnes of the fish, is insisting on continued access to
antibiotic treatments.

>From 12 kilograms a year a decade ago, the antibiotics used at salmon
and trout farms totalled almost eight tonnes in the first three months
this year, according to departmental figures.

The Australian Pesticide and Veterinary Medicines Authority permitted
the industry to use the most common antibiotic, oxytetracycline (OTC)
and the proprietary medicine, Aquaflor after a risk assessment.

"It is disturbing ... that the industry has used nearly double the
amount of OTC than was anticipated in the permit application," Mr
Llewellyn said in a letter to the Tasmanian Salmonid Growers'
Association.

The farms maintain a holding period to allow antibiotics to pass through
the fish before they are harvested, but Mr Llewellyn said there was a
potential public health impact if OTC entered the human food chain
through consumption of wild fish that might have eaten medicated feed
outside pens, or treated salmon that escaped.

Salmon also regularly escape from sea pens. In the latest incident, 9000
mature fish swam free of a pen at Strahan last month, triggering an
amateur netting spree over the Queen's Birthday long weekend.

Mr Llewellyn said a further concern was the use of the human treatment
amoxicillin. He threatened to prohibit its use after the state Director
of Public Health, Roscoe Taylor, told him of concerns about potential
allergic reactions, and the effect on the drug of antibiotic resistant
bacteria already in the sea.

The industry defended the increased use of antibiotics, mostly to treat
"flare-ups" of the infection marine Aeromonas, and salmon rickettsia,
which can swell internal organs and lead to mass deaths.

The executive officer of the Tasmanian Salmonid Growers' Association,
Pheroze Jungalwalla, said that in the long term animal husbandry and
vaccinations would improve, but it was critical to keep access to
antibiotics, and the industry had notified the authority of a predicted
increased usage of 10 tonnes a year.

The industry takes part in a national residue survey program run by the
Federal Department of Agriculture, Forests and Fisheries. Mr Jungalwalla
said: "These independent, random, surveys have never found salmon that
reaches the consumer to reach or exceed maximum permissible residue
limits of antibiotics."

 

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