Estimates - Health - Florfenicol
CHAIR - I'd like to follow up, if I may minister, with a question subsequent to Mr George's. I was reading last night a report in relation to the samples that were taken from one of the leases. I think it was a study that had been done by, or commissioned by Tassal, but it's part of the body of work in relation to some of these samples for florfenicol. We know that florfenicol, from the EPA study, went in quite a large area, so it was found in a large area in the water column study. I'm really wanting your advice about antibiotics. Small amounts of florfenicol were found in other seafood and abalone as well. So, can that not be a source of antimicrobial resistance in those other wild seafood? Could it not be a source?
Mr VEITCH - Just through you, minister, I'm just thinking whether this is something that is better left to a microbiologist rather than epidemiologist public health physician. I think it's fair to say that wherever antibiotics are used, there is the potential for antibiotic resistance to occur. The environmental findings, if I can recollect them correctly, are that there's actually fairly limited persistence and detection in the water column -
CHAIR - But there is still persistence.
Mr VEITCH - The persistence appears mostly to be limited to animals, so abalone and rock lobster, downstream and quite how that gets there isn't clear. It's not clear that it necessarily goes dissolved through the water column, it might be in tiny invertebrates, for example, that actually make their way downstream or move with the tide. So, the ecology of how that gets 10 kilometres away and is detected in those other animals is something that the environmental scientists are looking at.
But, it's correct that whenever antibiotics are used resistance may develop, but it's another step to say, does that give rise to resistance in the human population? And what is the contribution of other antibiotic therapies in other - in agriculture, in human health. I'm not saying that everybody doesn't have a part to play. They absolutely do. But it is, as I think I said in my answer to Mr George, we need to think of all the moving parts before we conclude that we've got one that is the dominant cause of a human health concern, but we have to keep our minds open.
CHAIR - Thank you.
CHAIR - I have another question, minister, and this will be my last one on florfenicol, but it has been the subject of a great deal of concern from a public health perspective. Dr Veitch mentioned the study on the small amount of florfenicol used previously, but we're talking tonnes and tonnes in our public waterways. I would like to have those public health concerns allayed. What would be the best next step to ensure that we don't have any possibility in our waterways of any sort of antimicrobial resistance occurring in species that could be ingested by humans?
Mrs ARCHER - That's a pretty big question and it probably doesn't entirely sit within Dr Veitch's remit. I'm happy to ask him if he wants to contribute to that, but I think he's already identified that it sits across multiple agencies as well as not just relating to public health.
CHAIR - But I'm talking from a public health perspective.
Mrs ARCHER - I'm happy if he wants to provide his perspective.
Dr VEITCH - Through you, minister, I think we're all acknowledging that antimicrobial resistance is a serious consideration and we do need to undertake surveillance for the prospect of various forms of antimicrobial resistance emerging, through either looking at genes or looking at the bacteria. I think it's important to realise that, even though we've seen a substantial increase in the use of florfenicol over the last 12 months because it's the first time it's been used at scale, it's a quite different situation to the circumstances in Chile or China, for example, which are often invoked as evidence of incipient human harm.
Florfenicol and other antibiotics have been used in much greater quantities for much longer across many more species in those countries, particularly China. The pressure there for the emergence of resistance as a human health concern much greater, and it's been so for a long time.
We're not there. I think that's my way of coming around to say, we're at a point in time where we should be looking at this, but we're not at a point where we're going to see incipient harm to humans. I know the paper that you refer to. I think that was the Monash study that was done. I've actually been in contact with the research group did that to try to get some of the background papers that weren't included with the publicly available stuff to be able to look at that in more detail.