SENIOR agricultural bureaucrats have been told to investigate whether Australia is under threat from a new “super, superbug” that’s believed to have started in China’s intensive poultry industry and could be spreading globally.
Last week during an additional Senate Estimates hearing in Canberra, NSW Labor Senator Doug Cameron questioned Department officials extensively about the use of non-tariff trade barriers to restrict export market access.
But NSW Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan said concerns about transferring deadly diseases between countries, through imported food products, worked both ways.
Senator Heffernan said an antibiotic resistant Chinese superbug was a “present time” issue which the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources needed to interrogate.
The veteran Senator and Junee sheep and grain farmer said the “superbug” had resulted from the over-use of antibiotics in China’s intensive chicken farming industry and was the latest global “spectre” which could spread to other industries.
“Allegedly if it gets out of China it can threaten the world and the human race because it’s a super, super bug for which there is no fix (at the moment),” he said to officials from the Department’s Trade and Market Access Division.
“Are you acquainted with that?”
Senator Heffernan stressed the Chinese “superbug” had only recently been disclosed publicly and vigilance was needed within Australian border protection ranks.
He said he was unaware how long the problem had actually existed but the “super, superbug” could be a far bigger threat, if it left China.
He asked the Department officials to take his information request on notice and return to the Committee with a response, including whether the biosecurity threat has escaped China.
Department Secretary Daryl Quinlivan said the nation’s Chief Veterinary Officer (CVO) and his people were constantly monitoring animal health events around the world.
Mr Quinlivan said microbial resistance was a major issue for human health and animal husbandry and “quite a bit of activity” was happening within the Commonwealth and the Australian context, to monitor the general situation.
Department Deputy Secretary Lyn O'Connell acknowledged the existence of growing concern about the development of superbugs around the world and antibiotic resistance.
She said last week Australia’s CVO held a stakeholder forum in Canberra where issues of anti-microbial resistance were investigated and it was noted that Australia’s regulatory measures around the use of antibiotics, was well regarded.
Ms O’Connell said the Department was also “connected-in” with alerts on such issues and knew what was happening externally.
But in pushing for an extended Committee briefing, Senator Heffernan said besides the global food task challenge, microbial resistance was the human race’s biggest threat.
“Is the Department aware that in China at the present time there is a real crisis with a new superbug which is several times, shall I say, more deadly than anything that’s struck before?” he said.
Last week, a report published on the Kurzweil Network website said a widespread E-coli bacteria, that can’t be killed with colistin - an antibiotic drug of last resort - had been found in samples taken from farm pigs, meat products, and a small number of patients in south China, including bacterial strains with epidemic potential.
The report stated the issue was unveiled by an international team of scientists in a research paper published in the scientific medical journal, The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
It quoted Cardiff University School of Medicine Professor Timothy Walsh who collaborated on the research with scientists from the South China Agricultural University.
In the article, he said “The emergence of the MCR-1 gene in China heralds a disturbing breach of the last group of antibiotics — polymixins — and an end to our last line of defense against infection”.
Professor Walsh was also quoted as saying, “We now have evidence to suggest that MCR-1-positive E.coli has spread beyond China, to Laos and Malaysia, which is deeply concerning”.
“The potential for MCR-1 to become a global issue will depend on the continued use of polymixin antibiotics, such as colistin, on animals, both in and outside China; the ability of MCR-1 to spread through human strains of E.coli; and the movement of people across China’s borders.”
“MCR-1 is likely to spread to the rest of the world at an alarming rate unless we take a globally coordinated approach to combat it.
“In the absence of new antibiotics against resistant gram-negative pathogens, the effect on human health posed by this new gene cannot be underestimated.”
A synopsis of the research said the MCR-1 gene was found to be present in 78 (15 per cent) of 523 raw meat samples; 166 (21pc) of 804 pigs in slaughterhouses; and 16 (1pc) of 1322 samples from hospital inpatients with infections.
Speaking for the Australian Chicken Meat Industry, veterinarian and clinical pharmacologist Dr Stephen Page said the emergence of MCR-1 was “certainly a disturbing development” particularly if it merged with New Delhi metallobeta-lactamase bacteria (NDM) and produced resistance to polymyxins - including colistin - and carbapenemases.
Dr Page said the main concern was to public health and little harm was expected for animal health because colistin wasn’t used in Australia.
He said colistin wasn’t needed to treat infections on livestock including poultry so whether resistance was present or not “is not a concern”.
“There was never any possibility that MCR-1 could emerge in Australian animals as colistin is not registered for use and there is no need for its use,” he said.
Dr Page said any steps taken to prevent MCR-1 entering Australia should focus on the protection of human health and not animal health.
He said MCR-1 was most likely to arrive in Australia on or in a returning traveller via raw food products.
“The Department of Agriculture should review the possible high risk foods and routes of entry and develop risk management strategies for those foods with the highest likelihood of contamination with MCR-1,” he said.
Colistin has been widely used for more than 50 years in livestock like pigs, poultry, cattle and fish throughout Asia and Europe.