Australia's edge on environmental AMR

For most of its history, World AMR Awareness Week has been about human medicine: prescribing habits, hospital infections and drugs that no longer work.

Now, that focus is shifting. The water, soil and waste through which resistance moves between people, animals and crops are now on the global agenda. And it is a part of the problem where Australia starts from a strong position.

That was the assessment of Ludovic Bernaudat, of the UN Environment Programme’s chemicals and health branch, who was in Brisbane in August for EDAR8, the international conference on the environmental dimensions of antimicrobial resistance, hosted by SAAFE CRC.

Asked where Australia stands in the global picture, he said: “Because of SAAFE, it’s actually very advanced, providing the research and scientific information that regulators needs”

The timing matters. UNEP’s executive director, Inger Andersen, told the conference by video that the environmental dimension of AMR “is not optional. It must be at the very core of our response”.

Yet in many countries with national action plans, the environment sector remains “a little bit less engaged, somewhat on the outside” and environmental surveillance is one of the weaker parts of national monitoring.

The first is national machinery. The Australian Centre for Disease Control became a standalone Commonwealth agency on 1 January 2026, with a branch dedicated to One Health, climate and environment. Its head, Rajan Martin, told EDAR8 that the groundwork for a national One Health surveillance system, including a master action plan and a cross-portfolio network, is largely in place.

The second is working capability in the states.

Amy Jennison’s Queensland Health laboratory traced a Listeria outbreak to a single rockmelon supplier by matching patient samples to farm swabs. Every other Australian grower’s fruit could stay on sale.

“If we just stop at the patients,” she said, “we’re never going to get these sorts of good outcomes.”

The third is research designed to be used.

SAAFE’s Professor Erica Donner, who co-chaired EDAR8, said regulatory science and the translation of research into practice was “close to our hearts and mission”.

One example presented in Brisbane: SAAFE, CSIRO and the federal environment department are working out how AMR can be built into Australia and New Zealand’s water quality guidelines.

None of this means the job is done. The CDC’s new national wastewater surveillance program does not yet cover AMR. And Martin was frank about what comes next.

“The next challenge is really to move from mapping into sustained implementation, with clear governance, agreed participation, and the investment needed to make it durable,” he said.

For Australian agriculture, the stakes are practical. Antibiotics and fungicides are tools that farmers rely on, and keeping them working is a matter of productivity as well as health.

More than 450 delegates from over 50 countries came to Brisbane to work on that. As SAAFE Chair The Hon. Karlene Maywald told them, discovering new knowledge is only the beginning.