A new EU scientific opinion has been released by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).

The document outlines a set of outcome indicators that will assist European Union Member States to assess their progress on reduction of antimicrobial resistance and antimicrobial consumption, both in the human and animal sectors.

Antonia Ricci, the director of the Food safety Department of the Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale delle Venezie, and chair of the EFSA’s BIOHAZ panel (the group of experts on microbiological dangers that have written the document) says:

“The demand for specific indicators to be used throughout the European Union derives from a specific mandate of the European Commission and it underlines the importance of adopting a common approach to face antimicrobial resistance. The drafting of the document required a long and in-depth interdisciplinary work by EFSA, EMA and ECDC, that shared their specific competencies and efforts to ensure reliability and effectiveness. Now we are all asked to make use of these indicators to monitor and evaluate our interventions to reduce antimicrobial resistance and the antimicrobial consumption, both in veterinary and human medicine.”

The IZSVe developed over the years a specific antimicrobial resistance activity to monitor antibiotic resistance by means of specific diagnostic and investigation practices, as well as activities to balance the antimicrobial consumption in veterinary medicine.