Quantifying Human Health Risks from Animal Antimicrobials

Louis Anthony (Tony) Cox (), Douglas A. Popken () and Richard Carnevale ()
Additional contact information
Louis Anthony (Tony) Cox: Cox Associates, 503 Franklin Street, Denver, Colorado 80218
Douglas A. Popken: Cox Associates, 503 Franklin Street, Denver, Colorado 80218
Richard Carnevale: Animal Health Institute, 1325 G Street NW, Suite 700, Washington, DC 20005-3104

Interfaces, 2007, vol. 37, issue 1, 22-38

Abstract: In 1969, the Joint Committee on the Use of Antibiotics in Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Medicine in the United Kingdom warned that uncontrolled use of similar antimicrobials in humans and food animals might promote the emergence of resistant strains of foodborne bacteria that could endanger human health and compromise the effectiveness of antimicrobial therapies in human patients (Swann 1969). The Animal Health Institute (AHI) and its member companies collaborated with Cox Associates, an operations research consulting company, to develop and apply new, practical, quantitative risk assessment (QRA) modeling methods to assess the previously impossible-to-quantify risks (and benefits) to human health from continued use of animal antimicrobials. We came to some surprising conclusions that were robust to many uncertainties. Among these were that antimicrobials that benefit animal health may benefit human health, while regulatory interventions that seek to reduce antimicrobial resistance in animals may unintentionally increase illness rates (and hence antimicrobial use and resistance rates) in humans. These new QRA models and methods enable industry and regulatory decision makers to quantify and compare the probable human health consequences of alternative animal antimicrobial use plans and to design more effective approaches to protect human and animal health.

Keywords: decision analysis; risk; health care; epidemiology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/inte.1060.0275 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:orinte:v:37:y:2007:i:1:p:22-38

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Interfaces from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().