Campaigners have called on the UK government to ensure future trade deals do not undermine progress that has been made to reduce antibiotic use in British meat and dairy farming.
The Alliance to Save our Antibiotics wrote to trade secretary Liz Truss this week warning that a trade deal with Australia that does not take into account farm antibiotic standards risks exposing UK consumers to greater levels of antibiotic-resistant bacteria through food.
The group, an alliance of medical, environmental and animal-welfare organisations that includes Compassion in World Farming, Sustainable Food Trust and Medact, wrote that allowing the importation of meat and dairy produced with routine antibiotic use would “set a very poor precedent for future trade deals, farming standards and global antibiotics stewardship”.
It claimed Australian farm antibiotic standards are significantly lower than the UK’s with poor surveillance of farm antibiotic use and no published usage data for any year after 2010. In 2010, it said Australian poultry farmers used 16 times more antibiotics per animal than British poultry farmers currently use and the Australian pig industry used three times more antibiotics per animal. It added that the Australian data for beef and lamb production is not detailed enough to make an accurate comparison.
British farmers, by contrast, have taken “commendable action to reduce their antibiotic use by about 50% since 2014”, according to the alliance.
The letter noted that Australia continues to use five different antibiotics (avilamycin, bambermycin, monensin, olaquindox and salinomycin) as growth promoters in cattle, pigs, poultry and sheep. Using antibiotics as growth promoters is banned in the UK and the EU, and from next year the EU will also ban the importation of meat and dairy produced with antibiotic growth promoters.
The alliance called on Truss to provide reassurance that the UK government will “uphold clear antibiotics-stewardship priorities when negotiating trade deals that include animal foods, including with Australia”.
The World Health Organisation has previously described the risk of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) – where microorganisms like bacteria, viruses, and some parasites become resistance to antimicrobials such as antibiotics, antivirals and anti-malarials – as one of the most urgent public health challenges facing the world, putting millions of lives at risk.
Excessive use of antibiotics in food-producing animals has been identified as a significant cause of AMR. The UK government-commissioned O’Neill review published in 2016 concluded that curbs on the use of drugs in agriculture were necessary to stop the spread of drug-resistant infections with a particular focus on restricting the use of antibiotics to prevent, rather than treat, disease.
MPs on the environment, food and rural affairs (EFRA) select committee have called for the key details of the agreement with Australia to be made public as soon as possible to allow scrutiny of potential implications for UK farmers ahead of the agreement of the full legal text later in the year.
