The main opportunity: "superbugs", page-5

Good thought Malleeroot!

I am a dairy cattle veterinarian so it had crossed my mind also. Here are some of my thoughts:

1. There is a trend toward reducing antibiotic use in production animals (due to the risk of spreading resistant bacteria/genetics to human populations). Some countries require samples to be cultured (with sensitivities) before antibiotics can be prescribed.
2. Within that trend there is a trend towards prescribing "green" antibiotics, such as penicillin, over "red" antibiotics such as fluroquinolones and 3rd/4th gen cephalosporins. Red antibiotics are those which are of critical importance to human medicine - a last line of defense when others fail or in diseases with limited options in the first place. There may come a time when vets are no longer allowed to prescribe some of the actives we currently have available.
3. Multi-resistant bacteria which cause disease are not common in dairy cattle in NZ at this stage. Not too sure about rest-of-world - probably common in pig/poultry.
4. Treatment failure in NZ dairy cattle is not often due to resistance, but due to other factors - irreversible tissue damage, failure of antibiotic to reach substantial concentrations at the site of infection (brain and joints are difficult), etc.

In the case of Recce's compounds, I believe they will be marketed towards treating multi-resistant infections in people, and priced as such.

This means that even if someone manged to get Recce licensed for use in animals, they would potentially be cost prohibitive for production animals. They could have a use in treating companion animals in special circumstances - people spend thousands on pet health and many are insured.

Despite the fact that Recce have found no evidence of a mechanism for resistance to their compounds, it is likely that governments/health departments will still want them to be prescribed prudently just-in-case, reserving them for super-bugs and severe infections/sepsis in people.