Stewardship is the theme for the 2014 Antibiotics Symposium being hosted by the National Institute for Animal Agriculture (NIAA) from Wednesday, November 12, through Friday, November 14, 2014, in Atlanta, Georgia, at the Crown Plaza Atlanta Midtown hotel. More specifically, the symposium will focus on antibiotic use and resistance, and moving forward through shared stewardship.

The symposium is open to individuals who want to learn from each other, engage in productive discussion and create successful strategies to preserve antibiotic efficacy. Historically, the NIAA Antibiotics Symposium has brought together academia, government researchers, the scientific community and stakeholders within animal agriculture, human medicine and the environment to share and learn from each other in order to seek resolution about the often misunderstood issues of antimicrobial use and resistance.

This year will be no different, as the symposium focuses on minimizing resistance and maintaining antimicrobials important for animal and human health. Keynote speakers representing both the animal and human health communities will start by identifying and prioritizing key resistance issues at the human and animal interface, including important antibiotics that are used in both animal and human health, potential routes of transmission of human antibiotic resistance, and ways genetic components of resistance are moved around.

Next, existing animal and human health antibiotic stewardship programs will be presented, highlighting best practices for farm, small animal, human hospital and private clinic settings; focusing more attention on small animal practitioners and independent physicians; identifying gaps and weaknesses; and looking for alternative use practices in the future.

As with all goals, a means of measurement is necessary, and the symposium will address what are/should be the metrics of success of implementing antibiotic use regulations/policies. Existing metrics of success will be illustrated, followed by the identification of proposed metrics of success and recognizing a desired outcome (quantifying use versus minimizing resistance).

An integral part of the annual NIAA Antibiotics Symposium is discussion via small breakout groups and a large group session, with the goal of identifying real-world solution strategies to move forward with minimizing resistance at the human-animal interface, and generating improved communication between stakeholders.

More information about the Antibiotics Symposium and NIAA can be found at NIAA’s purpose is to provide a source for individuals, organizations and the entire animal agriculture industry to obtain information, education and solutions for challenges facing animal agriculture.