EU: New legislation on monitoring and reporting antimicrobial resistance in zoonotic bacteria
November 19, 2020/ EURLEX/ European Union.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu
Within the "EU One Health Action Plan to Combat Antimicrobial Resistance," the European Commission committed itself to review the legislation concerning the surveillance of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in zoonotic and commensal bacteria in farm and food animals.
- From 2015 to 2018, the Commission carried out a series of audits in the Member States in order to assess the application of Implementation Decision 2013/652/EU by the relevant authorities, which highlighted that Member States face certain difficulties in implementation.
- In 2019, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) published a scientific report entitled "Technical specifications on harmonised monitoring of antimicrobial resistance in zoonotic and indicator bacteria from food-producing animals and food." This report recommends specific adaptations of the current AMR surveillance and reporting system in order to effectively respond to the ever evolving AMR threat and to ensure continuity in the assessment of future AMR trends starting in 2021. These recommended adaptations mainly refer to food-producing animal populations or food categories to be sampled, sampling design to be followed, bacterial species to be tested for AMR, and analytical methods to be used by laboratories in charge of AMR testing.
- In order to continue obtaining comparable and reliable data on AMR, it is important to take into account the recommendations of the EFSA scientific report when defining the most relevant combinations of bacterial species, food-producing animal species and food products to be included in the harmonized system for monitoring and reporting of AMR starting in 2021. It is also appropriate to reduce the burden on the relevant authorities of the Member States as much as possible, in particular by addressing known implementation difficulties and focusing the AMR surveillance on biological samples or bacterial strains already collected in the framework of existing national control programs.
- In addition, whole genome sequencing (WGS) is a promising technique to replace conventional phenotypic assays in microbiology and is increasingly used worldwide. However, only a limited number of Member States currently have the capacity to routinely use WGS for AMR surveillance. Therefore, the new legislation authorizes the use of WGS as an alternative on a voluntary basis only, but imposes technical conditions on the WGS technique to ensure comparability of data.