Indian government prohibits colistin use in food-producing animals to contain bacterial resistance

The Indian government has banned the use of the last-resort antibiotic colistin in food-producing animals, according to Indian media reports.

Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) has welcomed the health ministry’s recent move to ban colistin use in food-producing animals. On July 19, the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) notified the prohibition of sale, manufacture and distribution of colistin and its formulations in food-producing animals, poultry, aqua farming and animal feed supplements. The move is expected to help regulate antibiotic misuse in these animals and contain antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

AMR − antibiotic resistance, in particular, − is a global public health crisis, which is believed to heavily impact India. Antibiotics are becoming ineffective as bacteria are getting resistant to the antibiotics used to kill them. Bacterial infections, therefore, are now either difficult to treat or are untreatable. Since a huge proportion of overall produced antibiotics are used in rearing animals for food, such misuse is one of the key reasons for rising AMR.

“We welcome the health ministry’s move to ban colistin use in food-producing animals. It will help preserve this last-resort antibiotic for humans and save lives from deadly antibiotic-resistant infections. It will go a long way in fighting antibiotic resistance,” said Chandra Bhushan, deputy director-general, CSE.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) considers colistin as a ‘highest priority critically important antimicrobial’ for humans.

The World Health Organization has classified colistin a "highest priority critically important antimicrobial." The antibiotic is used in human medicine to treat serious, multidrug-resistant infections that aren't responding to other antibiotics. Antimicrobial resistance and infectious disease experts are concerned that using the drug in food-producing animals promotes the emergence of colistin-resistant pathogens that can spread from animals to humans. The emergence of the colistin-resistance gene MCR-1, first identified in Chinese pigs and pork products in 2015, has been linked to the widespread use of colistin in Chinese farms.

Banning colistin from being used in food-producing animals puts India in line with the European Union, United States, China, and Brazil, which have all stopped using colistin in animal agriculture in recent years.

CSE press release