Government fails to live up to its commitments on farm antibiotic use
UK government must set more ambitious targets on antibiotic use on farm animalsCampaigners are calling on the Westminster government to deliver on its commitment to ban the use of prophylactic antibiotic treatments of groups of farm animals, as the EU did in 2022, and to prioritise better husbandry standards.
A new report from the Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics says that the UK government has failed to deliver on its commitment to ban prophylactic antibiotic treatments for farm animals – originally made by then Defra Minister George Eustice MP in October 2018.
After years of delays, the government has finally produced proposals for new legislation on the use of antibiotics on frames. Unfortunately, they will be weaker than the European regulations that came into force in January 2022 despite repeated pledges that it would align with the EU on this issue.
The UK legislation, which is largely based on the 2022 EU rules, includes some positive measures, including a prohibition on using antibiotics routinely or “to compensate for poor hygiene, inadequate animal husbandry or poor farm management”. All prophylactic antibiotic use will be restricted to “exceptional circumstances where the risk of an infection or of an infectious disease is very high and where the consequences of not prescribing the product are likely to be severe”.