The California Department of Food & Agriculture (CDFA) announced Sept. 14 that its Antimicrobial Use & Stewardship program has released its second annual report summarizing state-level veterinary feed directive (VFD) information.

CDFA said the new report for 2019 is broken into five main sections: background; VFD compliance; data summaries, tables and figures; data on 2019 manufacturing and distribution reports, and CDFA’s future steps in working toward reducing antimicrobial resistance in animal agriculture.

In the report, CDFA said it has observed that veterinarians are submitting VFD orders to feed manufacturers and distributors with incomplete information, and the agency has conducted outreach efforts to address those errors.

In 2019, CDFA reported that 664 VFD orders were submitted in California, up from 634 in 2018, with the majority (497 orders) intended for bovine use. By antimicrobial, 337 orders were for chlortetracycline, and 170 were for neomycin/oxytetracycline.

CDFA noted that distributors reported that more than 4 million lb. of VFD feed was sold in the state in 2019, compared to 3.2 million lb. in 2018. Manufacturers reported 37,333 tons of medicated feed produced in 2019, up from 28,623 tons in 2018, CDFA said.

Click here to read the "Annual Summary Report: 2019 Veterinary Feed Directives." Visit the Veterinary Feed Directive section of the AUS Outreach webpage to view the previous VFD summary report.