Antibiotic Resistance in Agricultural Environments: A Call to Action.

To facilitate the goal of reducing the transfer of antibiotic resistance (AR) from pre-harvest food production systems to clinical settings, it is essential to increase current understanding of the natural levels, and the environmental fate and transport, of specific types of AR. Currently, there is no consensus on which antibiotics, which types of resistance, or which specific AR genes are most relevant to scientific research addressing the impacts of agricultural antibiotic use on human health. In light of the need expressed by the World Health Organization for “internationally recognized principles for risk assessment…related to antimicrobial resistance owing to non-human use of antimicrobials,” there is a need among the research community involved in tracking of environmental AR to develop a standardized and rigorously validated suite of methods that can be used across the farm-to-fork continuum to accurately inform food safety risk assessment models. This talk will present a call to action to address this critical and as yet completely un-addressed need, in hopes of initiating a dialogue towards consensus.