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Cover Stories

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  New FDA guidelines: Rating an animal antibiotic’s importance to humans - The new industry guidelines issued by the US Food and Drug Administration in December suggest removing performance claims from food-animal antimicrobials deemed “medically important” to humans and reserving those feed additives for treating controlling and preventing specific diseases.
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  Changes ahead: Everything you need to know about the new guidelines for oral antimicrobials - The US poultry industry has already shown that it knows how to use antimicrobials judiciously. In this special report, Poultry Health Today editors take an in-depth look at what FDA calls Guidance for Industry No. 213 — the rationale behind it and the changes in store for the US poultry industry.
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  Judicious drug use: The good, the bad and the ugly - According to FDA, judicious use means administering an antimicrobial drug appropriately — and only when necessary.
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  Guidelines at a glance - Highlights of the new U.S. Food and Drug Administration guidelines for antimicrobial usage in poultry and livestock.
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  New FDA antibiotic guidelines: What’s a VFD? - The phrase Veterinary Feed Directive (VFD) may be new to poultry veterinarians and producers, but the process has actually been around since 1996, when Congress passed the Animal Drug Availability Act.
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  New FDA antibiotic guidelines: Why comply? - FDA’s new antimicrobial guidelines are strictly voluntary — to a degree. In the agency’s own words, they “do not establish legally enforceable responsibilities”; they merely “describe the FDA’s current thinking on a topic” and, unless otherwise indicated, should be viewed only as recommendations.

Sound Science

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  Supplemental bacitracin reduces mortality, C. perfringens in broilers - Commercial broilers that received a bacitracin-supplemented diet had less Clostridium perfringens in their gut, according to researchers at Ohio State University.
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  Methods of diagnosing enteric disease clarified - Diagnosing clostridial enteric disease in poultry remains a challenge — primarily because many clostridial species can be a normal inhabitant of the gut, which makes it difficult to determine their role in virulence.
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  Increased CVI988 vaccine use credited with decline in Marek’s disease - Increased use of CVI988/Rispens vaccines is credited with declines in the incidence of Marek’s disease (MD), according to investigators from USDA‘s Agricultural Research Service.
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  Organic raw poultry not necessarily safer - Organic raw poultry is not necessarily safer for consumption than conventionally raised poultry, indicates a study from the University of Tennessee.

On the Docket

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  Five federal bills seek to curb on-farm antibiotic use - Although FDA has introduced new guidelines for using feed antibiotics in poultry and livestock, some members of Congress would like the industry to go a few steps further.

Discoveries

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  Field trials show practical, economic benefits of E. coli vaccine in broilers - Recent studies on two continents have demonstrated that a modified-live vaccine reduced losses from Escherichia coli in broilers, even when the disease challenge was strong.
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  Single dose of Poulvac IBMM+Ark protects long-lived broilers for at least 9 weeks - One dose of the live, attenuated vaccine Poulvac® IBMM+Ark effectively protected broilers against two infectious bronchitis (IB) strains for at least 9 weeks, a recent study shows.
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  Better protection shown with recommended Marek’s disease vaccine dose in two genetic lines - The recommended dose of two Marek’s disease virus (MDV) vaccines provided better protection in two genetic lines of meat-type chickens compared to a lower dose, the results of a recent study show, Tarsicio Villalobos, director of technical services, Zoetis, said at the AAAP conference.

Reality Check

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  Reality check: Oft-cited antibiotic-usage figure mixes numbers from two reports - Confidently presenting facts — not defensive rhetoric — can go a long way toward shaping consumer opinions about commercial poultry production and the importance of maintaining flock health, welfare and efficiency. For this special feature, Poultry Health Today checked the facts behind three common claims about feed antibiotic usage.
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  Reality check: 87% of antibiotics used in animals rarely used in human medicine - Confidently presenting facts — not defensive rhetoric — can go a long way toward shaping consumer opinions about commercial poultry production and the importance of maintaining flock health, welfare and efficiency. For this special feature, Poultry Health Today checked the facts behind common claims about feed antibiotic usage.
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  Reality check: Multidrug-resistant strains of Salmonella rare in humans - Confidently presenting facts — not defensive rhetoric — can go a long way toward shaping consumer opinions about commercial poultry production and the importance of maintaining flock health, welfare and efficiency. For this special feature, Poultry Health Today checked the facts behind common claims about feed antibiotic usage.

Special Report

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  Doing a 180: A little education goes a long way toward changing customers’ attitudes about antibiotics - Back in 2008, Pfizer Animal Health (now Zoetis Inc.) conducted market research to get a better handle on consumer opinions about the use of antibiotics...
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  Being more transparent: Media experts offer tips to poultry companies - Between fast and easy Internet access, hundreds of cable channels, the explosion of social media, the rise of “citizen journalism” and the emergence of new digital news hubs and blogs, keeping quiet on controversial issues is no longer a wise option. Because today, if poultry producers don’t tell their story, someone else will tell it for them — and not always with great accuracy.
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  Feeling misunderstood? Vet urges producers to take action - Don’t blame consumers if they seem to have little understanding of modern poultry and livestock production. “It’s not their fault and it is not intentional. It is just the way society has evolved,” insists Scott Hurd, DVM, PhD, an associate professor and director of Iowa State University’s food-risk modeling and policy lab.

The Last Word

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  Editorial: ‘To health!’ - Welcome to Poultry Health Today, a new magazine we’re sponsoring to keep US producers, veterinarians and nutritionists on top of the latest developments in this critical area of production.