Back to Explorer

FDA's Strategy on Antimicrobial Resistance - Questions and Answers

FinalCenter for Veterinary Medicine12/10/2013

Description

1. What is FDA doing?2. What are antimicrobial drugs and antimicrobial resistance, and what is the difference between an antibiotic and an antimicrobial?3. What do you mean by “production purposes”?4. What types of drugs are the focus of FDA’s strategy?5. Why are you taking this collaborative (voluntary) approach?6. How can FDA ensure that animal producers won’t use these products the same way they always have, under the guise of “preventing” disease?7. Why is the involvement of a veterinarian important?8. How will FDA determine whether its strategy has had a positive impact on slowing antimicrobial resistance to these drugs?9. How will FDA ensure that animal producers and veterinarians are no longer using the affected medically important antimicrobial drugs for production purposes like growth enhancement or feed efficiency?

Scope & Applicability

Product Classes

4
Food-Producing Animals

Target population for the anticoccidial drugs; Target population for the evaluation of drug effectiveness.

animal drug

Subject to approval under section 512 of the FD&C Act.

Medically important antimicrobial drugs

Drugs used in food-producing animals that impact human health

New Animal Drug

The category of products covered by this guidance.

Stakeholders

4
Veterinary Oversight

A recommended principle for the use of medically important antimicrobial drugs

animal drug sponsors

implementation of changes by animal drug sponsors to voluntarily align use conditions.

Veterinarian

Professional providing oversight for antimicrobial drug use; Veterinarian is to determine the actual duration that the drug will be used; Professional ordering the duration of use for antimicrobial drugs

Sponsor

Entity responsible for submitting applications under section 524B

Regulatory Context

Attributes

3
Subtherapeutic Levels

Dosage levels often used for growth promotion rather than disease treatment

Critically Important

Antimicrobial drugs that meet criterion 1.; Ranking (C): Antimicrobial drugs that meet Criterion 1.

Subtherapeutic

Level of antimicrobial use in animal feed often associated with resistance development.

Identified Hazards

Hazards

3
Antimicrobial Resistance

Public health threat resulting from loss of effectiveness of antimicrobial therapies; Efforts to mitigate the development of antimicrobial resistance.; Public health concern that labeling changes aim to mitigate.; development and spread of antimicrobial resistance encouraged by certain practices

Foodborne transmission

Major pathway for resistant bacteria from food animals to humans.

Microbiological Contamination

Environmental factors affecting biological products

See Also (1)

FDA's Strategy on Antimicrobial Resistance - Questions and Answers | Guideline Explorer | BioRegHub