Some 45 delegates from FAO member countries (China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Viet Nam), resource experts (China, Croatia, Hong Kong SAR, India, Ireland, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, USA), organizations (MSD Pharma Singapore, NACA, SEAFDEC-AQD) and FAO officers tackle the challenges and key issues concerning AMR in the aquatic sector.

AMR occurs when microorganisms (e.g. bacteria, fungi, viruses and parasites affecting humans, terrestrial & aquatic animals and plants) become resistant to antimicrobial agents, thus making infections or diseases caused by such microorganisms more difficult or impossible to treat.  While antimicrobials play a critical role for ensuring health and productivity, their imprudent use and the associated emergence and spread of antimicrobial resistant microorganisms place everyone at great risk.

This final workshop (12-14 December 2017), of the FAO Project FMM/RAS/298/MUL, hosted by the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore, in collaboration with INFOFISH, provides an important platform to improve the scientific understanding of AMR, to share experiences in setting governance mechanisms to support national action plans on AMR (within One Health and tripartite mechanism), to continuously enhance knowledge on food fish safety hazards, disease prevention, correct diagnostics, disease management and best practice (good biosecurity and good aquaculture) and future actions and capacity development needs to address AMR.

The aquatic sector benefits from the prudent use of antimicrobials in terms of improving on-farm biosecurity and husbandry (e.g. use of vaccines and disinfectants), treating chronic diseases (that cause reduced growth, low food conversion rate and poor survival thus leading to reduced production) and epizootic diseases (that can cause mass mortalities, there are concerns regarding threats posed by abuse, overuse, misuse; human and animal health issues; environmental and ecological issues; antimicrobial residues and AMR.

During the 68th World Health Assembly (May 2017), countries reaffirmed their commitment to develop AMR National Action Plans, based on the Global Action Plan on AMR – the blueprint for tackling AMR – developed in 2015 by the WHO in coordination FAO and OIE. Strengthening regulation of antimicrobials, improving knowledge and awareness, promoting best practices and fostering innovative approaches using alternatives to antimicrobials and new technologies for diagnosis and vaccines are key actions. Leaders at the UN General Assembly (UNGA September 2016) called on WHO, FAO and OIE, in collaboration with development banks such the World Bank other relevant stakeholders, to coordinate their planning and actions, support the development and implementation of National Action Plans and AMR activities at the national, regional and global levels and to report back to the UNGA in September 2018.

FAO, as the global authority on food and agriculture, will continue to provide technical assistance to members within the framework of One Health and the FAO Action Plan on AMR (2016-2020) focussing on the four pillars (awareness, evidence, best practice and governance) in support of Resolution 4/2015 on AMR adopted during the 39th FAO Conference (June 2015).

More than 1200 publications related to aquaculture, including technical papers, circulars, FAO reports, CD-ROMs, web-based products and newsletters, in both hard and electronic versions and in various FAO official languages have been published and distributed worldwide during that period, in both hard and electronic versions.

Publications have been assembled on this pen drive as Portable Document Format (PDF) files, in order to make them easily available, searchable and printable to all users especially those with limited access to the Internet.

The application is readable in Windows, Linux and Mac environments. Users can easily search publications through the publication list or through a free text-based search engine which performs search on titles, abstracts, authors, keywords and year of publication.

For further information

The FAO Yearbook of fisheries and aquaculture statistics 2015 has been just officially released. This edition contains the most recent global statistics on capture fishery production, aquaculture production, commodities production and trade, apparent fish consumption derived from food balance sheets as well as statistics on fleets and employment of major producing countries. It is structured into a booklet (containing summary tables, relevant general notes, concepts and classifications, a pull-out map of FAO major fishing areas as well as a brief overview of major trends and issues relating to the individual statistical sets) and a CD-ROM presenting the full yearbook package with all the key information and the complete set of statistical tables.

The Yearbook is one of the tools through which users can access the different statistics collated and disseminated by the Fisheries and Aquaculture Department of FAO. These include:

1. FishStatJ - Software for fishery statistical time series offering experts and scientists a stand-alone application for complex and sophisticated data exploration and extraction.
2. Online Query Panels enabling users to extract customized information and reports

A new and refreshed website of the Coordinating Working Party on Fisheries Statistics (CWP) is alive. The updated site includes changes to navigation, a refreshed look&feel, a section with highlights and relevant upcoming meetings, and importantly the new version of the CWP Handbook.

The primary goal of this upgrade was to provide the revised CWP handbook contents in a more dynamic and structured way so to allow for a more intuitive and easy navigation across sections, while adapting the contents of the old CWP website to the new FAO institutional image.

With this revamping the users will get more from a quick read through contents that we plan to be periodically updated so as the website will become a reference to all those belonging or related to the fisheries statistician's community.

For any questions, suggestions, feedback or comments, please E-mail us at CWP-secretariat@fao.org.

The Ninth session of FAO's COFI Sub-Committee on Aquaculture wrapped up last week in Rome. The Sub-committee meeting brought together 188 delegates from 94 member countries and observers from regional fisheries bodies, international organizations and civil society organizations to review a full agenda of aquaculture-related items.

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